Adega
by Lechery
Summary: POST "THE XENA SCROLLS": Janice is sent to Germany to recover art stolen by the Nazis. Recovering from torture, Janice discovers that everything she knew has been transformed by war, including her best friends: Melinda and Jack.


TITLE: ADEGA

FANFIC TYPE: XWP, UBER, MJR (Melinda/Janice Romance)

RATING: R (for violence, language and suggestive themes)

SUMMARY: POST "THE XENA SCROLLS": Janice is sent to Germany to recover art stolen by the Nazis. Recovering from torture, Janice discovers that everything she knew has been transformed by war, including her best friends: Melinda and Jack.

THE HISTORY: I am not a historian, or a history major or a major expert on history. This story, first and foremost, is a work of fiction. Not everything depicted in this story is historically accurate, particularly the details pertaining to the Nazi nuclear program. For example: the Nazis never developed a nuclear reactor capable of firing a nuclear bomb. Fritz Houtermans is a real German scientist who worked on fission experiments and developing nuclear technology. However, he did not remain in Germany and joined the war effort in America. Merkers was a mine but not a cover for a nuclear storage facility, etc. etc. I tried to be as accurate as possible without interfering with my intention to explore the effects of WWII. Plus it creates drama, and I know how much you guys love drama…

EPISODE SPOILERS: THE XENA SCROLLS

SPECIAL NOTE: A big thank you to my beta team: TRIGGERHAPPY, CALLIOPES_MUSE, CHRIS, and especially to Kristin who was with me from the beginning to the end and made this thing possible :D

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The air was vicious and cold, biting at concave stone and vulnerable flesh as though starved. The frozen air could not mask the acid scent of rotting excrement, blood, and the overwhelming reek of moulding vomit. Hazed, ruddy torchlight illuminated lime-slicked tiers of ancient stone. Insects and rodents crept into the diseased anatomy of the dungeon cells; fattened rats scurried across wooden beams to nibble on spider webs and the creatures trapped within them. Each hour brought sporadic chaos: sounds of screaming and barking. In the distance, the hollow drip of putrid water marked time in seconds. Behind a wall of iron bars, a woman sat huddled in the corner squeezing the edge of a splintered wooden bucket in a vice-like grip.

She was filthy, her face matted with layered sweat and dirt, fresh moisture glistening at her hairline. The dried blood on scratched flesh pulled her skin taut, making her nerves sting as she moved the muscles in her face and limbs. Dry heaving into the bucket, she added to the misery of the dark prison cell. She forced two fingers to the back of her mouth and elicited a strong gag. The acid burned, purged into the bucket yellow and vacant. She tried again and another mouthful rushed out to spill into the wooden pail. A scorching pain ripped through her throat and palate until the object of her affliction clinked into the bucket.

Her throat was raw, inflamed by the contents of her stomach. She moaned in agony, the burn lingering on her lips and she reached into the viscous bile, thumb and forefinger grasping a tiny key. She turned the slimy key in her fingers as though fascinated by it, examining it with darkened blue-green eyes. Placing the key between her teeth, palps of fingers clawed at the stone debris in the corner of the cell. She flinched as her hand contacted a sharp edge and cursed under her breath. She proceeded to unearth the object from the hollow in the wall, digging out the thin iron wedge until she plucked it carefully from the clammy, dark abyss.

The woman staggered towards the iron bars disoriented and weak. Grasping the bars, she peered down the hall at the guard, his eyes fixed on the draped National Socialist flag and the rusted cage suspended from the ceiling by a metal chain. He looked bored, rocking back and forth on the heels of his combat boots as he whistled an uneven tune.

Satisfied, she took the key from her mouth. Her right hand snaked up the cold iron bars until she reached the large panel lock. Fear and doubt crept into her chest, seized her in an asphyxiating grip and her breath hitched in her throat. She pressed the key up and tried to ease it into the lock. The key slipped, fumbled by slimy, dirty fingers and fell, landing on the stone with a sharp clattering echo. Her face drained and eyes widened while she turned to survey the guard. He continued to whistle, oblivious, cheerful.

Anxious, desperate fingers stretched out onto the stone as she forced her right arm through the bars. Fingertips scraped against pebbles and dust, felt the cold metal edge of the small key but could not grasp it. Her effort rearranged the object into the crevices between the stones where it gleamed, teased with the imminence of being caught. The guard shouted at her, glimpsed her hand clawing at the dust. The sound of his menacing shouts filled her ears; the even pace of combat boots stamped the ground and closed in on her. A single, frustrated tear escaped the corner of her eye, mingled with the grime on her skin and made it sting. She prepared the hand grasping the iron wedge, tucked it behind her back and the wall.

He came to the iron bars yelling, his unfastened helmet wobbling from the aggressive movement of his body. Bending toward the ground, he sniffed about the stone floor, scrutinizing with feral interest. He quickly discovered the metal key, clawed at its tiny form and rose to stab at the lock. It clicked twice and he burst through the opened door. He sneered at her, bared his gleaming fangs as his paws seized her chin and thrust her face upward. He cursed her, shook her and dangled the fallen key at the tip of her nose; spat his rage at her face.

She kept her face hardened, showed little emotion to ignite his temper. She gripped the iron wedge tighter, tearing the soft flesh of her palm. Feigning passivity, she waited until he released his powerful grip to slap her. His menacing hand raised and hesitated upon descent, the startled limb trembling as he registered his injury. She lifted the iron wedge from the pliant flesh of his left cheek and watched as the blood trickled down into his open mouth, his large paws coming to protect and cover the gushing incision. Encouraged by his whimpering, she plunged the iron wedge through his forehead, trimming the flesh of the thumb protecting the first wound. The wedge lingered in his skull, and to free it, she wrestled it callously, scoring the flesh deeper. His knees buckled and she followed the large body to the stone floor. Her keen eyes scrutinized him for signs of life. His throat convulsed beneath taut skin: a slow, desperate swallow of phlegm and copper-hinted blood. She ran the sharp wedge along his throat, scorn pressed into the creases of her furrowed brow. His movements slowed at last and she gave up, her energy spent and adrenaline gone. Her viridian eyes scanned the lacerated corpse: the disfigured face of the guard and the pool of blood beneath his head to match the scarlet laced between her fingers.

Recovering enough strength, she bent and searched his uniform, found a dagger, bullets and a black pistol. She lifted her torn shirt to switch it for the soldier's jacket and struggled against her ripped clothing. She winced as her thumb contacted a stitched wound, vivid and raw, surfaced from beneath the cloth waist of her trousers. Her eyes narrowed at the foreign mark and her fingertips brushed the sore tissue, the brutally sewn stitching. Dream-like her thoughts wandered into flashes of memory: images of a cold metal slab, obtuse metal tools in rows and an overpowering dread. A hazed, liquefied object seized in bloodied fingers. She squeezed her eyes shut and clenched her teeth. The vision faded, memories drowning in distortion. She did not have time to be thoughtful.

Dressing quickly, she loaded the pistol and headed down the passage. The other prisoners made noises as she walked by, some of them begged to be set free. A decrepit, skeletal man howled to notify the guards, his brown, rotting teeth uncovered by snarling lips. She scowled at him and slinked along the stone walls. Passing underneath the rusted cages, she stared at the immense red flag brandishing a black swastika across the space of the wall. Omnipotent. Overwhelming.

The sound of clattering metal filled her ears and a gentle murmuring followed. She peered around the corner, finding another door made of iron bars. Her feet moved heel to toe to conceal her heavy footsteps and she inched toward the door. She turned the rusted latch carefully, pulled the door open with deliberate slowness. Squealing hinges destroyed her secrecy and her arm shot out in reflex, pistol swaying in her outstretched hand. She froze. There was a man in the room in a white coat, his back turned to her. He was washing his hands at a metal sink in the corner and called to her without looking:

"Ah, Richter, I'm glad you came in," he gestured with a tip of his head toward a white sheet, eyes trained on his task, "I need you to get rid of the body."

Seizing the opportunity, she removed her dagger from its black sheath, walking briskly toward him. She reached around the man's throat to carve the blade into his flesh. He turned, blood sputtering from the wound as he gagged. She watched him flounder, crashing to his knees, one hand pressed against the gaping wound while the other clutched the severed sink in vain.

The kill was effortless. She stared reverently at the scarlet-matted dagger, her eyes working their way along the glinting steel. Above the blade, she glanced at the metal slab, a white mass of fabric on top of it crumpled in human-like form.

_…get rid of the body…_

Her curiosity piqued and she examined the draped cloth, with haste pulled it back to reveal the corpse beneath. He was obscene, mutilated and burned, his torso exhumed in pieces. He reeked of charred flesh and burning sulphur, his face almost unrecognisable. But she knew him. It was the French pilot: the man charged with the task of transporting her, the man promised a safe return home for his heroic patriotism. She dropped the cover over him again, ignored her harassing conscience. Sentiment could wait.

Stepping out of the room, she came to another dimly lit hallway and a short staircase. She pressed her back to the stone, slipped along the shadowed hallway from wall to wall, taking cover in the depressions of the crumbling tiers. The dagger stayed firmly in her hand.

A tall archway led into an area with a large stone column and a patrol guard. She observed him from a depression in the stone wall, her eyes scanning the trappings of the room. She squinted, the vivid electric light foreign to her sheltered eyes, accustomed to the torchlight and the darkness. She spotted a communications radio propped up on a table next to a yellow map displayed on the wall. The map was encumbered with pinned symbols and coloured markings. The radio whined in the expansive silence, wavelengths travelling through the static haze while combat boots echoed as they stomped past the table. The guard disappeared behind the column, strolling toward the lockers, and she cautiously stepped into the room, her gut knotted with terror.

Treading stealthily past the column, she stepped up behind the sentry fixated on the locker shelving. She raised her arm behind his neck. The guard gasped as he stared into the locker, the light around him absorbed by a sudden darkness. She flinched at the sight of her own distorted shadow rendered gigantic above him. She plunged the dagger. The blade cut him as he turned to face her, gaped a hole in his neck and sunk toward the hilt. He groaned and his eyes rolled back, mouth hanging open in pain. The body collapsed against the open locker door, slamming the iron mass against the stone wall. The hollow clamour reverberated through the calm and she cursed as her eyes assessed the damage. Her vision skittered from end to end of the room for signs of danger.

A single voice from behind her shattered her nerve.

-_"What's going on!"_

Reflexively her hand retrieved the Luger pistol. She whipped around, arm stretched out, vision following the metal scrape at the tip of the barrel. Her hand muscles pulsed, squeezed the trigger back toward the grip. A bullet flashed from the mouth of the pistol and the body dropped to the floor. She watched the slender smoke escape the barrel tip, the air filled with the sound of her heavy breathing. Her veins thrummed with adrenaline. She remembered the old curse, welcomed the familiar sensations of its aftermath. Killing. It was not unlike breathing: fixed and effortless.

The radio whirred in the silence.

She walked over the guard's body, wiping her feet against the grainy floor. Her boots left bloodied footprints. She turned her head in examination, watched the puckered flesh of the headshot burst with escaping blood. She searched him, took his ammunition and went hastily toward the lockers to raid the contents, slinging a first aid bag over her shoulder and the guard's automatic rifle across her chest. She stuffed the extra magazines and Luger bullets into the bag and scurried over to the radio.

The model was different, German made. She gained little knowledge in France how to operate ham radios and the scrambled mix of signals left her frustrated and lost. She tried the knobs again and input the frequency. She spoke in an even tone, eyes scouring the room and the halls for intruders.

"Rembrandt calling Arcadia, come in, Arcadia!" Static. Droning robotic squeals. She tried again.

"Rembrandt calling Arcadia," her voice intoned with desperation, "Arcadia, do you copy?" The static returned and she resigned her effort, her head lolling back as her eyes squeezed shut in defeat. The radio garbled,

- _This is Arcadia. Transmit your message._

Relief washed over her in a warm wave and she staggered as she spoke, relayed the message in code.

"Rembrandt here, still alive. Plane shot down. Captured in… " She looked around and spotted the yellow map above her. The markings were concentrated in Germany to the west. She leaned over the table, struggled with the fading print beneath the scribbles of red ink.

"Captured in… _W, Wewelsburg_. Don't know where... A dungeon. A hideout maybe. Pilot is dead… " Static and silence. The seconds raced on and she fidgeted impatiently. Even armed, she felt naked, exposed to unseen predators that waited to devour her. Her nerve dissolved into old, familiar dread.

"What are my orders, Arcadia?"

- _Has the mission been compromised_?

"Negative. I was not interrogated." She looked back toward the laboratory room, swallowed hard and added, "The pilot took his life with cyanide."

- _Understood._ _Investigate the building. Radio with the information you collect and we'll give you further instruction. You must escape enemy hands at all cost. Do not compromise your mission. Your employer doesn't want American intelligence getting too involved. This is Europe's war. _

"Roger, Arcadia. Rembrandt over and out." She switched the radio off and the radio dials swung dramatically as the power cut, "Bastards."

The electric hum of the light bulbs buzzed in the eerie silence; dead bodies drained of blood on each end of the gray room. She switched the radio back on wondering if she could reach Washington. She stared at the dials as the needles swayed maniacally left and right. The radio emitted a squall of turbulent mechanical noise: static frequencies and howling signals. No one responded to the call. Exasperated, she stepped over the body of a guard and headed into the hallway, a spiral staircase visible at the other end, a colossal Nazi flag radiating through the synthetic light. She walked casually forward, stopped as she heard a hitch from the radio in the other room.

- _Richter? Himmel? Status report._

Nazi officers. Her eyes widened and her pace quickened down the hall. She gripped the automatic rifle, held it prone and tilted it up at the winding staircase. Satisfied, she bounded up the stairs, desperate to be away from the prison cells, the mutilated pilot, the putrid air and the demanding voices emanating from the radio. She could hear glimpses of words and static,

- _Richter? Himmel? Why are you not answering? Where is Dr. Hertz?_

Gasping for breath as she reached the last stair, she stumbled toward the large iron door. Exit. It groaned despite her gentle manoeuvring. The cold air was jarring to her senses, as foreign and familiar to her as the blinding glare of natural light. The sky was overcast and the land below the parapet walk was lifeless with the quiet languish of winter. She was on a stone walkway that led to a conical tower. Looking up at the tower, an open gorge decorated with Nazi flags loomed over her, the construction like a medieval palace. Trembling from the frigid air and confusion, she scanned the mammoth structure that held her captive. Within the massive building, she could see the courtyard but beyond it was a bleak, white oblivion of snow and fog. The wind whispered through her cropped red-gold hair, bit at the tips of her ears and fingers, and she swallowed her disbelief. She was in a castle.

Crouched low, she scurried down the parapet walk, cautiously pushing the brown iron door open. Inside she found another winding staircase obscured by darkness. Kaleidoscopes of bright colour weaved charmingly along the steps, projected and distorted through stained glass windows. As she climbed the stairs, her eyes glanced curiously at the art and colours. She passed a window with a sacrificial lamb depicted in passive countenance, a golden crown with violet jewels placed above its head. _Achtung_ scrawled in dark paint. A window with an angel in a regal gown washed the winding staircase in gold and red. She ran past more iron doors further toward the roof, glanced at a window depicting a golden crucifix, a lion and an ox below it gathered in humble reverence. At last she reached the final door at the top of the staircase, and on the wall above her, in a vibrantly coloured semicircle, an eagle with its wings outstretched glared down at her.

The imperial ivory head was turned to the left amongst a collage of white and blue patches of glass. A yellow-gemmed eye glowered upon her, ribbons of red trimming outlined the immense wingspan. Her resolve frayed a little more. She felt like a slave. The inhuman gaze burned through her skull. Judgement. Another master. Her chains were absolute.

She pulled the door open slowly, and the well oiled hinges preserved the silence. A sentry stood yards from her position, the open area was vast and empty. She moved stealthily, gripping her rifle. As she neared him, she pulled the rifle back, the bulky handle aimed at the back of his head. With one fluid strike the guard was dazed, stumbling forward to the edge of the tower. Arms swaying with hands grasping desperately at the vacant air, his balance betrayed him, and he tumbled over the brink, screaming as he watched the ground draw toward him. She listened to the faint liquid thud of the body, organs and bones pulverised by the impact. The scarlet mass of blood and obtuse limbs flared in the gray abyss of winter light and snow. Her pity was transitory, broken by the garish bark of a low, furious voice.

She followed the sound, traced it to a grate at the far end of the rooftop. Men exchanged orders in German and the sound of footsteps followed. She peered warily over the rusted perimeter of the grate, her finger trembling on the trigger. Her gaze met furious, searching eyes that preyed upon her own. She gasped, squeezed the trigger upon impulse. His body shuddered as he died, an array of bullets piercing his face, blood splattered across his pale skin. She recoiled from the reckless shot, fear trembling through her body settling liquid and hot in her stomach, coursing up the swollen veins in her neck. She inched toward the grate again. The officer lay in a pool of blood, face toward the sky, the remains of his eyes gleaming vivid and blue, anger replaced with shock. She could hear the familiar hum of a radio emanating from the room.

A sudden burst of noise snapped her attention to the side. She did not hesitate, hardly saw the youth: his barely adult face staring idiotically at his target, his hand trembling as he gripped the pistol. Two bullets exploded from the barrel of her gun with a light touch. His stomach bled and he staggered backward but did not fall. She squeezed the trigger again, and two more bullets lanced the bloodied torso. He fell to his knees, half turned and came to rest on his side.

She went over to him, searched for ammunition. His breathing was slow, wheezing and his tongue moved imperceptibly in his mouth as though fighting to talk. She swallowed and ignored his inquisitive eyes, the scarlet blood frothing at the corners of his lips. Stepping over him, she gazed out at the enormity of the castle, spotting thick black cables suspended through the air: a tram station to the west. Heading back down the staircase, she entered a door left ajar, walked gingerly down the hall until she saw the officer's dead body and the light from the open grate. Directly in front of her was the active radio.

Inputting the frequency, she dialed out the signal. The radio whirred, static collapsed as she spoke into the mouthpiece, "Rembrandt calling Arcadia. Do you copy?" The static returned and crackled. A voice responded,

- _Arcadia here. Transmit your message._

She pressed down the buttons on the microphone and replied in code, "I'm in a castle. It's under Nazi occupation. I'm not sure what their purpose is here… "

- _We know where you are. Have you found a way to escape? _

"There is a tram station west of here. I don't know where it goes, but _anything_ has to be better than this."

- _Take it. That will lead you to the local village of Wewelsburg. We will send a member of the local resistance to your aid once you're in the village. _

"What about the Nazi occupation? Don't you find it odd that they're congregating here… _in a castle_?"

_- We've had that idea for some time. You will contact us via radio once you've convened with the resistance. We'll inform you then. Arcadia out. _

She sighed. "Roger."

She pinched the bridge of her nose, eyes squeezed in frustration. Her head tilted skyward and she searched for sunlight through the grate. But there was only gray half-light, the familiar and vacuous haze of deep winter. Silent. Desperate. Unfulfilled.

Her gaze travelled to the wall above the radio, met with a vast, fraying map of the world. _Wewelsburg_, Germany. The area was marked with an inked swastika. She stared at the mark, followed it west and across the ocean borders to America. Her home.

"Good old, Uncle Sam," she said, eyes narrowed, a smile tugged at her lips, "has it marked you yet?" Her hand trekked toward her aching stitches and her voice trailed off, "I am."

Images of her house filtered into her mind, calmed her anxiety. She recalled the scents and sounds of the neighbourhood, the mingling aromas of cooking from the kitchen while she sat and read at the table, the radio surging with the voice of Jack Benny and his witty comedies. And after dinner, with a cigarette, she would listen to jazz_. _Bing Crosby. Billie Holiday. Cab Calloway. How she longed to hear it all, feel it all: the mundane routine, the forgotten luxury of the ordinary. _Moonlight Serenade._ The tune ran fleetingly through her head accompanied by the scent of an unmistakable perfume. A woman she once knew. An everyday comfort.

She shook her head. That world was gone. The reality was in her hands: polished black metal wedged between her palm and trigger finger with automatic fire. The last certitude left. She held it prone; let it guide her back down the spiraling staircase, past the stained glass windows and deep into the anatomy of the castle to the hulking double doors.

Through the doors, she was immersed in dark shadow and shallow red lights. Chain-link fences and machinery towered over her, groaning from exertion. She hid behind a large cylindrical boiler as a figure approached the nearby control panel. He pressed the buttons in an arbitrary fashion, lights blinking and unblinking. He pulled a lever and the room calmed. The machines lost their energy and power. He turned to head out the double doors and she leapt out from behind him, the barrel of the MP40 poking at his spine.

"Freeze!" She prodded him with the rifle, instructing him to turn. He trembled as he stared at her. He wore a one piece uniform matted with oil and grime. An engineer. She articulated slowly in his native tongue, "I'm not going to hurt you… if you co-operate. How do I get to the tram?"

He stuttered and spat his nervous reply, "A… ahead. Up th- upstairs. There."

He pointed. His blinking, avoidant gaze betrayed her confidence. "What were you doing just now?" She asked, raising the pistol to his face. "Everything was turned off… Why?"

He shook his head, repeating 'no'.

She pressed the rifle into his gut. "Ya know… they say the most painful way to die by gunshot is right in the gut… that way, all of the burning acid inside mixes in with your blood, spills out little by little… "

He whimpered. "I… I turned it off. I was ordered by my commanding officer. He said a French prisoner esc- escaped!"

"Did he now?"

She sneered at him, eyes narrowed. "Tell you what… you turn it back on, and I won't have to mail you back to your commanding officer in pieces. What do you say?"

He nodded vigorously and turned toward the control panel. With his back toward her, he keyed in the commands. She watched as the lights flashed and handle was raised. The machines came to life again with the sound of metal grinding and electricity humming, pistons pumped as steam whistled into the air. She walked backward toward the tram door, her eyes and her rifle trained on the engineer. "Good boy."

She felt her back contact the door and she opened it a crack, scanned the platform for guards. A tram car lolled in the wind, swaying on the overhead track in the wind. It looked abandoned. She turned back to him, kept the rifle on him a moment more and then used the force of her body to throw the door open, feet thumping on the stone platform as she bounded into the tram car. She got into the tram and slammed her palm against the control panel as it flashed green. The tram car staggered and screeched as it began to roll down the overhead tracks into the gray fog.

A few yards from the platform, a siren blared in her ears and she ducked, watching the tram station sink away in the distance. Guards swarmed through the doors along with the engineer who pointed at her. They fired at the tram and it rocked precariously from side to side. She stayed low, clutching the rifle to her chest as the windows shattered around her. She tilted the rifle above her, pulled the trigger and fired blindly at the air behind the tramcar.

Stray bullets clinked against the weakening exterior of the tram. She was approaching a tower erected in the middle of the overhead track. A guard fired from the lookout. She was an immobile target, caged prey. She bit her lip and raked her teeth against the flesh. She was done for.

***

Adjusting his uniform, he walked into the minute kitchen and retrieved the pistol laid on the table. Beside it, the warm scent of potato pancakes and fresh baked bread filled his nostrils. He reached for the bit of bread and broke off a chunk, popping it into his mouth and chewing happily. His palm cradled the magazine, snapped the metal wedge into the pistol and dragged the slide back. With a loud clap, the gun loaded, coiled spring launched the metal slide back into place. The woman bent over the stove jerked at the noise and turned to stare at him with mock scorn.

She approached him casually, heels clicking on the wooden floor and bowed her head to place a quick kiss on his lips, reaching up to straighten his hat, worry written into the faint creases of her lips and brow. He half-smiled at her, shared a knowing glance as her hands cupped his face. "I'll be fine," he murmured, grasping her hand and placing a kiss on her palm, "Besides… they like me."

"I know they do," she sighed, resting her forearms on his shoulders, "but they're not supposed to like you and you have no business being there. And in an officer's uniform! They could… "

He kissed her again and cut off her reply, "I'll be fine."

She nodded slightly and dropped her arms. "When will you be back?"

"The café will be open and I'll come in through the house. You'll be busy with the customers and won't even notice. You know how the dinner crowd is." She leaned her forehead against his and closed her eyes, committing to memory the warmth of his presence. He reluctantly pulled away with a final glance at her bright blue eyes.

"Be careful," she said solemnly.

He grasped the doorknob and turned back to her, "I will."

As he walked through the frigid, quaint little town, he avoided the Nazi outposts, guards congregated in pairs. The snow crunched beneath his combat boots and he meandered through the streets, knowing each pathway and every turn. The locals he passed ducked their heads in fear, but for one man, who looked him in the eye and regarded him reverently. He ignored it and continued his short journey.

The message was urgent; slipped to him beneath a coffee cup by a boy of the café staff, the translated encryption was scrawled in a desperate hand:

_Radioed from France at 16:00:_

_Emergency._

_Allies' soldier captured in Wewelsburg castle._

_Request backup at the tram station. _

_Need help ASAP._

The distress in the note hung heavily over his head as he read it behind the bar. He knew why they gave it to him, a quiet member of the resistance. He was a snitch, had a stolen uniform, and the local officers liked him because he appeased them, entertained them, provided for them. Yet the risk of being shot or deported was ever present, and as he ambled past the square, behind two conversing guards, he felt as though he willingly wandered toward his death.

The barrier doors loomed ominously over him. He pushed them open with a nervous hand. The hallway he walked was narrow, tunnelled and lined with a red carpet, medieval weaponry and Nazi flags decorated the stone walls. He marched toward the next door with his jaw clenched, teeth grinding. The muscles in his chest tightened around his ribs and he struggled for breath. His hand reached for the loaded pistol. Fear mixed into his blood, ran though him uninhibited.

Slowly entering the next room, he ducked into another, slithering through the labyrinth of corridors. Each hall he examined was empty, every room abandoned. He walked into a barbaric looking study devoid of books and warmth. A desk, a series of propaganda posters and maps; a radio against the far wall, a table with an abandoned plate of mauled bread placed beside the arched entrance. He looked about confused. There rooms were all vacant.

As he turned to leave, the radio sounded.

- _Allo? Town entrance, report status. Private Engel, are you there? _

He stared at the radio transfixed. The voice spoke in German. He walked over to it and waited, hesitating. Static fuzz filled his ears. Then the voice sounded again.

- _Allo? Engel? Bauer? If there is anyone there, please respond! _

He swallowed hard to clear his throat, activated the buttons and answered, "Allo. Private Engel reporting. All clear." The radio whirred and crackled, the response was delayed.

- _Understood. And the French prisoner? _

The French prisoner, the Allied soldier. His fingers thrummed against the table as he contemplated an answer, swallowing nervously. His palms were getting clammy. He closed his eyes as he replied, "The prisoner is dead."

He pursed his lips, grimaced as he listened to the mechanical sounds of the radio. He removed his hat and ran a hand through his hair. He fidgeted and tapped his foot. The need to escape was overwhelming. His eyes continued to travel toward the entrance.

- _Very good. Carry on, Private. _

The response startled him and he flinched. A blast sounded from the hallway -a door slammed open, hinges screeching. A barrage of footsteps sounded down the hall. He plastered himself to the wall, pistol held out in front of him. Carefully, he slinked down the wall toward the chaos. More gun shots. He squinted as he listened. Automatic rifles. A final surge of bullets sounded and hush seized the room, unnerved him. He swallowed the knot in his throat.

Boots hit the ground at pace, bounded toward him. A single pair. He turned the corner and came face to face with the barrel of a gun. He stared at it, trembling, brown eyes wild with fear. Steadily, the barrel dropped down as the soldier behind it relented. He looked up and gaped at the woman, the light viridian eyes that regarded him with equal disbelief.

"Jack?" Her voice wasn't as he remembered it. The mock, gruff drawl was replaced with a deep melodic voice.

"Well I'll be damned… " Jack ran a hand through his short brown hair, "Janice Covington." She raised the pistol back up to his chest and growled.

"What the _hell_ are you doing here?" She motioned toward his Nazi uniform, "Switch sides already?"

He blanched and raised his arms in surrender, "No! Janice… I've been sent to help you," and more quietly, "from the resistance… "

She paused, stared at his fearful eyes and conceded, "So they _did_ come through after all."

He studied the dishevelled blonde-red hair that spiked in dirty clusters around her head, followed the scratches and lines of grit down her cheek and neck. On her left arm, her jacket was torn, and on a white bandage, a blot of scarlet blazed through the thick cloth.

"Jesus Christ!" His eyes were wide as he searched for more injuries, "You've been shot!"

She grimaced, bent over in pain. "No. Knife wound. Panicked little bastard lost his pistol over a railing at the tram tower. Came at me with a dagger. Know a way out of here?" His brows furrowed as he stared at her injury.

"Yeah, I do. Can you move okay? I'll get you a doctor once we're in the village."

"I'm fine. The bandages are holding up. How far do we have to go?"

"Not very far. Stay behind me and give me cover fire. I'll clear a path for you if we get held down."

She followed close behind him, down a darkened hallway, "Will do."

He watched the room carefully, glimpsing over his shoulder in concern. She hobbled through the corridors, gun supported on her chest and held firmly in her right hand. Jack watched the precariously swaying gun with trepidation and moved out of its destructive path. He arched his eyebrows gesturing toward the rifle and she replied with a shrug:

"Get me outta here faster, and you stand less chance of getting shot… "

"Oh really?" He replied, leaning from his position on the wall to scan the next hallway. Empty. Safe. "Some ally you are. I already know the Nazis are after me. Bunch of merry bastards never leave me alone."

Janice scoffed, struggling to keep up the quickening pace, "Must be those astonishinggood looks."

"You know it, baby," Jack smiled, turning nervously back to the room.

When he entered the open court, he frowned and stepped back revolted. Dead soldiers lay strewn in piles of mangled limbs, scattered like the twisted bodies of insects deformed by bug spray. The scent of blood filled his nostrils, bullet wounds bled profusely. The soldiers' eyes were open, petrified, paralyzed mouths hung agape in agony.

"Jesus, Janice… this _your_ handiwork?" He stared at her, expression softening a little as he saw her eyes grow distant. He shrugged, offering her a half-smile, "Remind me never to piss you off." Her eyes brightened slightly, the hint of a smile tugged at the corners of her lips but never materialized. He winced and was silent as they wandered through the stone archways, walking hurriedly through the narrow hallway to the double doors. Janice watched the doors with child-like wonder, the slit of gray light from beneath the door shone ethereal. The pain of her wound was replaced with a dull ache in her chest and tears glazed her eyes. Freedom.

The metallic latch echoed as the door opened, hinges faintly squeaking. The winter air washed over her in seconds, and she inhaled the biting cold, eyes closed in ecstasy. Janice turned, looking onto the iron-railed balconies of shops and houses lined one after another in tight packed duplexes. The evergreen trees held ivory snow on their outstretched branches. A stray tear escaped from her right eye, trickled down a grubby cheek and stuck to the flesh and grit on her jaw. Overwhelming and profound mercy.

Jack stopped, petrified where he stood. With a sudden turn, he grabbed Janice by the arm, pinching her bandaged gash. She groaned, kept her scream behind clenched teeth. Her eyes burned vivid green, alive with fury as he tugged her along the path. He walked brusquely, leaned down toward her ear. "There are two guards walking up the street. Move!"

They scurried behind a gray building, entered the maze of cobblestone streets and slate bricked homes not unlike the world behind the castle walls: lifeless stone that crawled with sentries. Janice paced her breathing to steal the pain from her stinging wound. Jack whipped his head restlessly to and fro, Adam's apple bobbing in his throat as he swallowed repeatedly -a nervous habit. She spat her response through clenched teeth, "Think they saw us?" A rough voice yelled from behind them, distanced beyond the corner of a gray building:

- "_Halt_!"

Jack shot Janice an exasperated look, "Yep_._"

"What do we do?" She asked, looking at her mangled SS uniform.

"I think running would be a good idea."

- _Halt! _

The command was nearer. Her eyes widened. "Sounds good to me."

They manoeuvred through the layered streets, slipping on the wet, slicked stone as they turned abrupt corners, slate labyrinth winding in perpendicular paths that framed the secluded town. Janice was lost, forced to stare at the back of his jacket for direction, struggling to turn as quickly as he turned, the world a gray blur. His sunken, burnt-out eyes turned to look over his shoulder, hand gripping the loaded gun. Boots echoed around them, the rubber soles slamming against the pavement.

Janice stumbled, her arm wound burned as though it was new. Jack looked back, saw her slowing pace and grabbed the loose fabric on her coat, pulling her along, searching for an escape. A shallow river ran in the dug-out channels scattered through the town. He turned suddenly and jumped into one of the open waterways. She reluctantly followed, her body tensing as frigid water seeped into her bones from the knee down scalding her icy flesh. He crouched down with Janice in tow, ducking into the mouth of the small archway beneath the bridge. The sound of thundering footsteps filled his ears. More guards had joined the pursuit.

Their harsh, jagged voices roared at one another, demanding to know what had happened. Janice and Jack hid in silence, trembling violently from the freezing water. Jack stared nervously at the guards' boots, peeking up at the sidewalk above them where they congregated in flustered anger. His legs were going numb and his fingers stuck to the cold metal of the pistol grip. Janice watched her breath materialize in the icy air, staring miserably as it appeared in steady stream and vanished in a cloud.

A loud, animalistic noise sounded through the clamour of voices. Jack's head snapped up instantly and he craned his neck to listen again. The same call echoed through the cobblestone streets. He smiled. The SS guards turned their heads, noticing the sound as it appeared a third time. A gunshot thundered from above the bridge as a bullet ripped through the forehead of one of the Nazi soldiers. He dropped to the ground with a faint thud. Panicked, the guards fired their rifles into the air, coated the area in a blanket of bullets as they scrambled to find cover. On the other side of the tunnelled arch, a pair of boot-clad feet dropped down. Janice aimed, the rifle shaking in her grasp but Jack covered the barrel with his hand.

"Don't shoot," his glassy eyes were wide, a smile hinting at his violet-tinted lips. The man at the other end of the tunnel scuttled forward on bent knees, smiling up at Jack with fragmented and missing teeth. His hair stuck out of his workman's cap in errant, dirty strands, ice blue eyes reflecting the watery frost etched along the moist stone. Jack patted the man on the back, "Braun! You crazy bastard!"

The man smiled and whispered back, "Looks like we got here just in time. Got two boys on the roof with Mausers and three on the street with pistols." He winked. "Wife sent us to take care of you, _Jacky_. God, I don't know what she sees in you… you look like shit." He turned to Janice as she struggled to stay awake. "Who the _hell_ is this?"

"The Allied soldier from the castle," Jack replied, coaxing them to move toward the other end of the archway, away from the firefight.

"A woman? You're kidding me, Jack."

"Wouldn't dream of it," Jack replied quickly, "and don't piss her off. She left more Nazi corpses in that castle than you've left heartbroken tarts in Germany."

"Christ! I hope you're right," he said, "I won't have the boys risking their asses for just _anyone_." He shot her an unfavourable glance.

Janice narrowed her eyes at the man as he crawled out from beneath the bridge. Jack went to her side, spared her a sympathetic look, "Ignore him. He's a crazy bastard."

Her teeth chattered behind plum coloured lips, "So I've heard."

Jack climbed out and stood, offered his hand to Janice as she crept unsteadily out from under the bridge. She ignored the proffered hand and stood full height with pride. Jack withdrew his hand sheepishly. She stared at Braun with her shoulders squared. Jack watched the defiance burning in her darkened green eyes, saw the irked tension of muscle chiselled into her face along her cheeks and jaw. He stepped behind them both as they headed toward shelter.

They approached a duplex and were met by a resistance member who opened the door to them. They filed in quickly and stayed low to the ground inside of the home to avoid the stray bullets. The man turned to them. One of his coat sleeves was empty, twisted and tucked into the pocket of his bland peasant clothing.

"We'll have to disguise you to deflect _their_ attention," he said, nodding at Jack and Janice. "We'll trade our clothes for your uniforms."

Jack turned shyly toward Janice with a hint of unease as he removed his hat and loosened his jacket. She hesitantly followed, freeing herself of the weight of the rifle, removing her boots as she turned to unfasten the buttons on her torn blazer. The awkward quiet was broken by a garish bark and they jerked in unison.

"God, this _is_ war we're in the middle of!" Braun exclaimed. "It's no time for modesty!"

"Relax, Braun, and turn around," Jack scolded, coaxing the two other men to turn their backs as Janice undressed. Jack let his coat crumple to a heap on the floor and Braun immediately scooped it up, handing his shirt to Jack. The other man tossed his clothes in a heap behind him, shuddering in the cold. The faint clinking of metal punctuated the thin, icy air as Jack and Braun undid their belt buckles.

"Now," Braun said eyeing the front of his unveiled briefs, "before we pass judgements… let me remind you _all_ that it's the dead of winter and it's colder than a witch's tit in here… " Jack chuckled and stepped out of his clothing. He took Braun's trousers, tossing the belt toward Janice. From the pile of clothes, he seized Braun's black cap and much to Braun's chagrin, positioned it on his head.

"Don't be putting holes in that cap, Jacky," Braun mumbled, "I'm a bit fond of it."

He continued to mumble to himself as he donned the SS uniform and brightened enough to chuckle when he saw the other peasant clad in Janice's shrunken trousers and a torn jacket. He spoke mockingly into the air, eyes fixed on the wall, "_Are you decent, Madame?_"

"Yes," she replied shakily. The men turned around simultaneously and regarded each other with a satisfied grin.

"You look like the local delivery boy," Jack said, staring at the spike-thin bangs that poked out from her black cap, clouding her eyes.

"Alright," Braun said curtly, "enough coddling."

He walked to the front door, followed closely by the man with one arm who gripped a bag of _potato mashers._ Janice walked to the back door of the two-room abode and waited as Jack stayed behind. "Will you guys be okay like that?" Jack asked him, concern evident in his tone. "I think we've thrown them off enough… we shouldn't have any problem from here. Maybe you should retreat… "

"Nonsense!" Braun countered and continued in a sarcastic tone, "With my pistol and _this_ uniform, I am the _ubermensch_!"

Jack shook his head, smiling despite himself. "Be careful."

Braun raised the Luger beside his cheek as he slowly opened the door, "You too, _Jacky-boy!_"

The distant gunshots pierced the air in errant blasts: a formless frenzy of chaotic noise that dissolved in silence, blaring back to life as a grenade shook the ground and enveloped the streets with crumbled shards of slate and glass. Their movements were calculated, guarded as they ducked through the remaining twists in the forked roads. Jack reached into his pocket and fumbled for his keys, bounding toward a wooden door that marked the entrance. He worked the lock with ease, hastily throwing the door open and running inside. Janice followed and shut the door behind her. The warmth consumed them instantly, locked the hostile world outside.

Janice turned to see Jack with his head in his hands, walking toward the kitchen table. The mellow kitchen light hung over the dining area, suspended from a wide conical fixture. She walked over to one of the wooden chairs and collapsed into it, feeling the odd comfort of human artefacts filter into her system. Her wandering eyes glimpsed the kitchenette and sink with the dishes neatly arranged beside it; the fridge hummed mechanically on the reverse side framed in cracked yellow plastic. The floor was made of dark hardwood planks that reached throughout the kitchen, the halls, and to her right, the short corridor dissolved into a bedroom.

"Jack!" A young boy burst through the door, a white apron tied around his waist from which a pencil and notepad protruded in the front pocket. They jerked in unison at the noise.

"Hey, Ben," Jack croaked, looking up from his hands.

"You're back!" The boy regarded Jack reverently. As he turned to see Janice, he fell silent, bowing his head in embarrassment. Jack chuckled,

"This is Janice. She's an old friend of mine."

The boy looked up, dark, timid eyes darted from her and the floor. "Hi."

Janice raised her hand and waved, wincing as her wound elicited a sharp pain. She clutched her arm and Jack placed his hand on the boy's shoulder to instruct him, "Go and see if one of the girls can come and help her out, okay?" The boy nodded dutifully and disappeared through the wooden door. Jack walked over to Janice's chair and leaned against the table next to her. He flipped up his collar and adjusted his cap.

"I'm going to send for the doctor," he said, watching her agonized expression.

"No!" She exclaimed. A hand shot out to grasp his forearm. "I'll be fine."

"Janice, you… " She moved without acknowledging him, her movements slowed by the injury. She lifted the first aid bag over her head and dumped its contents on the table. A handful of bullets clinked onto the tabletop as rifle magazines clumsily bounced across the wooden surface. At the bottom, a suture kit fell into the heap of ammunition and a bottle of disinfectant slammed onto the wood. Janice cursed, examined the bottle for damage. Satisfied, she put the bottle down, gradually shrugged off her jacket, revealing a thick, white undershirt matted with sweat. With her right hand, she grasped the bandages on her left arm and bit by bit unwrapped them.

"Where'd you get this stuff?" Jack asked, lifting the suture kit in his hands.

"Stole it from the castle," Janice said as she undid the last of the bandage.

They winced in unison as she revealed the wound. Jack swallowed hard at the sight of it. It was deep scarlet, troubling. He felt dizzy. "Know how to sew?" She asked him.

"Not really," Jack said, his complexion pallid.

A tall, blonde woman walked into the kitchen, leaned under the hanging kitchen light. "Welcome back," she said, smiling as she stared at Jack.

"Thanks," Jack said, managing a half-smile. "Helen, this is Janice." He paused a moment to swallow before he continued, eyes drawn to the scarlet mess, "And _that_ is a very bloody knife wuh… wound." Helen examined the cut and her nostrils flared. Jack fidgeted and looked away. She turned to him and patted his shoulder.

"Ben needs someone in the kitchen to fill the orders."

"Right… " he replied, his voice choked and meek. He turned back to Janice, "I'll send a plate of food when you're ready." She nodded slightly and reached for the bottle of antiseptic. Jack blanched and ran through the kitchen door.

"He doesn't do well with blood," Helen said, gazing sympathetically at Janice. "He cut himself once - a hectic night at the café. Took one look at his missing fingertip and fainted." She offered a weak smile. A grin tugged at Janice's lips as she unscrewed the bottle cap. Helen reached for the item and took it from her, grasping a cloth from the pile of materials strewn about the table surface. She moistened the cloth with the substance and pressed it on the wound. Janice shrieked, breathed heavily through clenched teeth as the pain scored through her flesh. Instructing her to hold the cloth down, Helen reached for the suture kit. Janice amassed the strength to speak.

"Have you done this before?" Her green eyes were glazed and bright.

"A few times," came Helen's response as she threaded the needle, "Ben is accident prone."

"Are you his sister?" Janice croaked, observing the needle with trepidation.

"No," Helen replied as she manoeuvred Janice's arm under the light, "but I take care of him now."

"Where are his parents?" Janice asked.

"Deported," came the curt reply as the needle penetrated tender flesh, "He's Jewish."

Janice closed her eyes and groaned as the stitching began. Heavy-lidded, she stared at Helen's cascading golden hair and sharp features, tried to distract her mind. "How did he get away from deportation? They must know he's here."

Helen smiled slightly, her kind eyes glanced up at Janice, "That was Jack. He hid him for a while and then employed him when I got his papers."

"Papers?"

"Yep," she replied, an air of pride in her tone, "I'm a forger."

"Great," Janice hissed as the next stitch went through her skin, "I was hoping you were a nurse... "

Helen's smile widened. "I'm also Austrian. Now, so is Ben… and Jack, and everyone else who works here."

"Do you own the café?"

"No," Helen replied, "That belonged to Jack's family, but his family's name was too… dangerous for the time we live in. So he put it in his girlfriend's name and they run it together."

"His girlfriend?"

Helen offered her another genuine smile. "Don't look so scandalized. It isn't as though he signed it off to just anybody. They were business partners at first… sweethearts second."

The stitching became more irritating and they carried on in silence as Helen focused on her task. After many rough tugs along the gaping wound, at last, the stitches were complete. Helen cleaned it thoroughly, adding more antiseptic to clear the blood that stained the swollen tissue. She gently wrapped the arm in new bandages and clipped it tightly. Janice observed the tended injury and thanked her.

"It's no problem," Helen replied, "It's difficult to get the doctor here anyway. He's somewhat of a nationalist… I'm sure he'd be displeased to find a foreign soldier in his care."

"What makes you think I'm foreign?" Her brows furrowed.

"Um… your accent is… English? American?"

Janice sighed and mumbled, "American. That obvious, huh?"

"I'm afraid so," Helen smiled cordially, blush creeping up her neck. "In any case, don't think Jack will mind if you use the sink in the bathroom to get cleaned up. You'll have to mind that wound so you don't wash off the antiseptic. Down the hall, just before the bedroom."

"Thanks, Helen."

She nodded, "I'll see if Ben has some clothing you could use."

"Ben?"

"Yeah… " she replied, blush deepening, "I think… anyone else's clothes would be a bit… long on you?"

Janice grimaced and rose to her feet, waving off Helen's apologetic expression. "I get it," Janice remarked, "I'm short."

She grinned at Helen and turned to head toward the bathroom.

***

She squeezed the moistened towel in her fist, hot water cascading down her back. Janice welcomed the burn against her skin, wanting to eradicate the layers of grime and scarring left by her captivity. Her fingernails dug into her flesh through the towel, scraped raw her pale complexion. The water slid down her arms and dirt collected in the fibres of the cloth, blotches of bronze flecked with dark specks of unidentifiable dirt. She scrubbed between the webbings of each finger and toe, beneath her nails, behind her ears. She submerged her head beneath the running faucet, lathered the soap on her head and laced it through the heavy, greasy strands of her cropped hair. Her nails dug into her scalp, recovered thick deposits of dirt that clung to their surface. She scratched furiously until the coating of filth was gone. Opening the faucet again, she ducked her head beneath the stream of hot water.

The water converged at her forehead and nose, blinding and suffocating her. A spark of panic coursed up from her chest. She struggled as she gripped the countertop, meditated on physical sensations to calm herself. Overwhelmed, she stepped back from the sink and used the towel to wipe the water from her eyes. The thick veil of cloth covered her mouth and nose, ignited a greater frenzy. Her heart hammered in her chest, nerves flashed hot and strained, twitching signals through the network of her veins. She threw the towel to the ground, gasping loud mouthfuls of air.

When she calmed, she approached the sink again, stared at herself in the mirror. Her eyes narrowed in disappointment at the face she saw. Her eyes were lacklustre, red-rimmed, puffy, and burnt-out. The lines around her mouth and forehead were more prominent than she remembered. Her skin was sickly gray. Her youth, once believed infallible, was bleeding away from her. She sighed, eyes downcast. The damage had been done and the effects were permanent. Janice glimpsed the sore stitches at the left edge of her pelvis and squeezed her eyes tight, searching for the memories attached to the mark.

She received blank spaces of time and nothingness; a feeling of dread surfaced and died within her as quickly as it rose. She tried harder to rebuild on the scraps of collected memory, but all she could remember were the agonizing hours before her escape from the castle. As she pulled open the medicine cabinet, she decided it didn't matter, and reached for a small comb to run through her hair and brush it back.

Her head pulsed with an emerging headache, the result of hot water and the shock of the freezing winter air that hung in the bedroom. She noticed the clothing laid flat at the foot of the bed: a pair of grey trousers, a white shirt and white socks. Her black boots sat beneath the draped pant legs, cleaned of mud. She ran the towel through her mop of hair and quickly dried her body and got dressed.

"What I wouldn't do for a bra right now… "

She fastened the shirt and arranged the socks on her feet, followed by the snug boots.

The sound of muffled yelling travelled through the walls to her ears. The voices spoke in German. One of the voices belonged to Jack. The other was deep, bellowing and demanding. She leaned closer to the sound, faintly deciphering the words, "We have orders, Jack," the deep voice thundered, "and you _will_ let us through."

"But I have no idea what any of this is about… what could I possibly have of value to you, General?"

"Well there _is_ that woman of yours," the General said, his men snickering, "But you never mind that. She doesn't appear to be here anyway. Open the door, Jack."

"General, I'm quite certain you -" A gunshot cracked. Debris rattled to the ground.

"You are never to question me!" The General barked. "There is an intruder in the village and we will search every inch of this town until we find them!"

Jack's voice quieted, "Yes, Herr General."

Janice started, the tumblers in the kitchen door clattered loudly as Jack fumbled the lock in warning. She bolted from the bathroom, searching frantically for a spot to hide. The space beneath the bed was vacant but she stubbornly dismissed it. It was an obvious place. Beside the bed, a bookcase stood away from the wall. She pushed it back to hide behind it and the carpet beneath it snagged on the corner. It crumpled bizarrely, she noted, as though it was being manipulated. Janice crouched down on her knees to examine it closely. The kitchen door opened and the soldiers filed in.

Her fingertips trembled as she scoured the small rug with haste. There was a hole with a string suspended through it, attached to a corner of the carpet. She pulled it back. A hatch. Hurriedly, she lifted the door and went through, silently replacing the carpet over it. She descended the dark staircase to the frozen clay ground. Her eyes scanned the darkness as the floor creaked and echoed with footsteps above her. She was in the large expanse of foundation beneath the house. At the far corner, light shone through a rectangular grate just barely big enough for her to struggle though. Gingerly, she crawled forward, careful to avoid arousing the suspicions of the guards walking on the hardwood planks above her.

As she moved she could hear the guards ransacking the house: upturned mattresses and countless possessions slammed onto the floor in arbitrary patterns. Guns discharged into suspicious bodies of furniture and piles of clothing, in closets. Janice reached the rectangular grate and wiggled it open, discarding the weak metal fixture on the ground beside her. She flattened her cheek against the ground and eased her head through, wriggling her body the rest of the way. The faint noises of the sentries' commands filtered into her ears:

_- All clear_.

She tried not to imagine the destruction or the expression on Jack's face in the aftermath of their pillaging.

She squinted as she looked about, unaccustomed to the darkness punctured by areas of soft, blue-gray light. The air felt as cold as the winter chill outside, the sweet aroma of fruit tickled inside her nose. She shivered and wrapped her arms around her waist, slouching as if to avoid the cold air. In front of her, just visible from the shadows was a giant barrel with a spout protruding from the front. A wine cask. The sound of rustling seized her attention and she scurried to hide behind the cask.

Janice leaned out, cheek resting on the rough surface of the barrel as she observed the rest of the cellar. Over the tops of wine racks littered with green glass bottles, she saw Ben staring up at the ceiling in terror. He twisted his apron in knots, hands moving absentmindedly. Long, white fingertips reached out and touched his shoulder. His head whipped back. Janice leaned further out, able to see the hand and arm but not the figure from which it emanated. She heard faint mumbling and dared to venture further, wandering away from the safety of the darkness. Her breath hitched, chest ached from shock and guilt; her eyes glazed with the imminence of tears. She pushed the emotion down and continued to stare in silence. The sound of Helen's voice travelled into the cellar. "It's okay," she called. "The General is gone."

With that, the boy turned to the figure that comforted him, shared an affectionate glance and headed for the stairs. The figure remained, skittish eyes scanning the wine racks. It was a dream: the lights, the nausea, the cold air and the wine's familiar sweetness. As she inhaled the frigid air, her emotionless façade collapsed, tremors coursed through her slender frame. Janice crept forward, her movement hesitant, expression anguished and afraid.

The woman looked up instantly, primitive drives alerted by subtle noise. Her eyes narrowed in suspicion. In the blurred darkness, a black boot stepped into the threshold of light, a face obscured by shadow; gold strands of hair absorbed the radiance from the weak light bulb. The woman retreated, fear clouding her judgment. She straightened her posture, defensively resorting to the authority of her height. "Who's there?"

Janice faltered, confined to the safety of the darkness. Bunching her hands into fists, she took another step. The light rolled over her features to illuminate her face. She watched the woman's reaction, the colour drain from her cheeks as recognition settled in. A sad smile languidly formed on the woman's lips. She stumbled forward, emotions rising to the surface.

"Janice?" The woman asked, voice quiet with shock. Her accent brought back the memories perforce and Janice shut her eyes to keep her tears unshed.

"Yeah."

Time stretched between them, formless and discarded minutes frittered into the awkward pause as they gazed at each other in stunned silence, reverence, recollection. Controlled expressions guarded their shame. Melinda was first to dispel the stillness, arms reached out to touch the source of her grief; the being she was certain could not be real. Memories and nothing more.

Melinda stepped forward, her hand cupped Janice's shoulder as the other trailed down her arm. Her hesitation collapsed and she embraced her friend. Pulling back, they regarded each other with profound relief.

"My God… you're alive." Melinda uttered the words under her breath.

"To the disappointment of the Nazis," Janice replied with levity.

"How did you get here?"

"Jack lead me from the tram station in the square... I was trapped… "

"You're the captured soldier?"

Janice smiled, "Yeah."

A pause as Melinda felt the fibrous cloth beneath her left hand. The knife wound. Her brows furrowed, "You're hurt… "

Janice shrugged, "It's nothing."

She assured her with an affectionate smile. Melinda embraced her friend again, returned the grin, "I can't believe you're here."

Mel's trembling fingertips curled beneath Janice's ear and her own hands shook resting on Melinda's shoulders. Years of separation collapsed between them, breaths shared in the small abyss. A sudden noise startled them, gurgling up to the surface and echoing in their ears. Janice grimaced as her stomach growled a second time and Melinda's smile turned into faint giggling. She watched a slight flush on Janice's cheeks and ran her fingers through the mass of auburn hair atop the shorter woman's head.

"Hungry?" She asked.

"A little," Janice replied sheepishly, refusing to relinquish her hold.

"Come," Melinda said, covering Janice's hand with her own, "There's soup in the kitchen."

Janice pulled back, "What about the soldiers? They're looking for me."

The smile on Melinda's lips gradually faded, replaced with a grim mask, "I almost forgot… over here."

She walked past Janice into a darkened corner of the wine cellar. Janice followed and reached out to help Melinda move a large wine rack that towered toward the ceiling. Behind it, a worn-out iron door blended into the slate wall. Reaching into her small apron, Melinda recovered a ring of keys and slid one of them into the minute keyhole. The tumblers clacked within the heavy door and it yielded, groaning as she pushed it open with effort. Wordlessly, Janice stepped into the room.

Melinda strode mechanically past the bed, reaching up to pull on a chord attached to a light bulb. Janice scanned the illuminated room, finding within it a small bed flanked by a night table and lamp, to the right, a desk pressed along the wall with a wooden chair and little room to walk between them. In the corner: a dilapidated toilet barely partitioned by a cracked wall of bricks. Melinda faced away from her, eyes downcast.

"We've been using this room to hide people from them… " Melinda said, her voice meek.

"_We_?"

"Me… " Melinda began, hands fumbling with her apron, "and Jack… "

Janice remained silent. Melinda continued, "We hid his aunt and uncle until they could escape. We've hidden resistance members. Planned to hide the Allied soldier once we recovered him… I never imagined it would be you."

Janice sat on the bed, bouncing on it slightly. She turned toward Melinda half-smiling, "Not too shabby."

Melinda reciprocated the half-hearted grin and bit her bottom lip as she returned the door. Lingering beneath the frame, emotion flooded her mind: disappointment, fear. An aching sense of hope that she knew was ultimately doomed. She was transformed; Janice was different. War changed everything.

"I'll go get you some food… " Melinda said, watching Janice reply with a nod. "I'll have to keep this door closed in case the Nazis come down here… they're always trying to find ways to steal the wine without paying for it. Jack and I have keys to this room. Don't open the door for anyone, okay?"

Another obedient nod. Melinda disappeared through the doorway. Tumblers cracked, locks fastened. Like the prison bars. Janice lay down on the bed and stared up at the ceiling with her hands tucked behind her head. Paralysis. The slate walls wrapped around the ceiling corners and her peripheral vision. She was caged again. Captive once more.

***

Time bled into vacuous moments, shifts and nauseating twists of movement from right to left, hot to cold, wakefulness and sleep. Her consciousness wandered in and out of fantasy as she struggled to orient her body within the room. Sweat-slicked strands of hair stuck to her forehead and chilled in the cellar air. She stretched her muscular body in states of half-sleep, torn apart by dread and the deep voice that echoed between her ears. Her teeth ground noisily and with her eyes squeezed shut she was impervious to it, lost in the fevered dream. And at the height of it, she slowly floated to the surface, the voice of the Nazi doctor she heard calling from above her: the faceless monstrosity dissipating into the weakened hum of the light bulb hanging overhead. Gray washed walls around her, soft cotton sheets beneath her.

On bent elbows, she got up and scanned the empty room: the chair, the desk that brandished the abandoned white bowl slimed with remnants of stew and breadcrumbs, stale from supper hours ago. She flopped back onto the pillow, wondered how long she slept. She could not remember and could not have known, turned on her side, loathe to dwell on the flaws of memory. She pulled at the undershirt that stuck to her torso with sweat, climbed out from the heavy duvet cover and put on her trousers. The quiet room was numb with the electric buzz of the ceiling light. She ran a hand through her hair.

The lock scratched noisily and clicked within the heavy door. Frightened, Janice jumped back onto the bed, scrambled to the corner to hide. Hinges groaned and Melinda reluctantly poked her head through the doorway. They regarded each other quietly, fleeting moments of affection passed in soft smiles and warm looks. Janice gazed at the glass cups in Melinda's hands, a precariously balanced bottle of _Hennessy _held in the space between them.

"I, um… " Melinda said, floundering as she met Janice's eyes, "thought you might like a drink before you go to bed?"

"Thank you," a gentle smile played upon her lips as she let Melinda in, pulling the heavy door closed once her friend was through.

Melinda sat on the bed setting the cups down on the night table and poured the alcohol. Mahogany liquid filled the glass tumblers halfway and she handed one to Janice as she raised hers in the air.

"Cheers," she said softly, a slight flush colouring her cheeks.

Janice gulped the drink and drained it quickly. Melinda refilled her glass with a low chuckle, the alcohol trapped and held in her mouth, savoured leisurely. With her refilled glass, Janice walked around the bedposts and sat on the other side of the bed, her legs over the covers. Melinda joined her, removing her shoes as she propped her feet on the mattress. From the pocket of her blouse, Mel produced a red box of _Overstolz_. She flipped the package open, shaking it onto her palm. A mischievous look appeared on her face, eyebrows arched in question toward Janice. Janice smiled, pinching a white cylinder between her thumb and forefinger and dragging it from the cardboard.

"How did you manage this one?" She said, returning the playful glare she saw in Melinda's eyes.

"Jack has friends in high places," Melinda replied, slender fingers striking a match across the matchbox.

"The man I met earlier today was rather lowly," Janice sneered, her eyes narrowing as she leaned the tip of the cigarette into the flame and puffed, embers glowing as the bitter flavour flooded her mouth. Dry, delicious warmth.

"The resistance?" Melinda asked, cigarette bouncing from her bottom lip, "They _are_ criminals… technically. And smoking is against the law here… "

"_Technically_ more against the law for women than for men."

Melinda nodded, lit her cigarette. Janice took a drag from the white cylinder, opened her mouth as the smoke lingered in gyre-like shapes and then exhaled it all in one fluid stream, "_Vive la __résistance_."

Melinda laughed, the long cylinder dangling from two fingers curled around the tip, "That's French!"

Janice nodded, "I know."

"Did you take it in school?" She asked, reaching for an ashtray hidden in the night table drawer.

"Try more like, a week's crash course before I flew to the darn country."

Melinda's teeth were bared in a wide grin and she chuckled faintly, delighted. Janice took a long drag from her cigarette, frowned and looked away from her. Mel was oblivious.

"You never told me you visited France," Melinda said, laying her head back on the pillows.

"Before Greece, I hadn't… " Janice answered, her gaze distant and fixed on the gray wall ahead.

The quiet pervaded as they sipped their drinks and smoked, the charm of the moment lost.

"For the longest time… I thought… " Melinda paused, voice hitched as she gazed up at the ceiling, "I thought you were dead."

Janice shook her head, "Melinda… "

"I waited a long time… hoping… "

Janice raked her teeth against her bottom lip, downed the last of her cognac. Melinda took a long sip of alcohol, staring bleakly at the wall and drained of vigour, "Where have you been, Janice?"

Janice ran a hand through her hair, gazed at her feet. Cautiously, she glanced at her friend, and regretting the sight of her anguished expression, turned away. Melinda sat in the silence, despondent. She took another drink. Janice took a drag from her cigarette and rubbed her temple.

"I couldn't contact you… " she began, "even if I wanted to. I couldn't even tell you where I was… "

Melinda absorbed the information quietly. Seizing the tumblers, she refilled them both and handed one to her friend.

"I went to France when I left Greece," Janice continued after a calculated pause, "doing some work for an _employer_ back home. It was… _serious_, I suppose you could say. Government and private interests. They set it up through British and American intelligence. The Brits said what I was looking for was in France… "

"What were you looking for?" Melinda regarded her with scrutiny, a hint of curiosity in her tone.

"Stolen art… " Janice replied, inhaling smoke, "Gold. Money. I had to figure out where it was and how the Nazis were transporting it. Things just started vanishing from homes that were invaded, from private businesses, from the _Louvre… " _

"How could they expect you to take on that type of task? Alone?"

"I wasn't meant to return the paintings, Mel," Janice said, staring earnestly at her friend, "I only had to find out their locations. Where the Nazis were hiding it… so it could be exploited by my employer."

Melinda paused, eyes detached as she mused. "Did you find it?"

"Found lots of things… " Janice replied. "Paintings and gold and jewellery travelled from person to person, from greedy and desperate hands all over Paris. People helped Nazi officers steal art… anything they wanted so long as they were promised money or food. But the epicentre -the storehouse where all the stolen paintings and gold were hidden, was in the catacombs… "

"_Les Catacombes de Paris_… " Melinda said, the creases in her brow neutralizing as she fantasized.

"It was incredible… creepy even… " Janice said, a smile tugged at the corners of her lips as her eyes glassed in recollection, "I was right there… staring at it all: rows of skulls packed tightly, like bricks, in a descending maze… so many bones it was impossible to count them. And in the center of it, deep in the crypt, they kept everything stored: crates upon crates of the world's most valued art, boxes bursting with jewellery… pyramids of gold bars stacked in tiers. It was manned by dozens of people working constantly, arranging, transporting before it was all shipped to Berlin on the trains."

"How did you figure it out?" Melinda asked.

"A combination of things," Janice replied matter-of-factly, "Gossip. French intelligence and local resistance… there's resistance pockets everywhere it seems. I was there for over a year."

"Janice the spy… sounds swell," Melinda gazed up at the ceiling, exhaled wisps of smoke and watched them weave into nothingness.

"I wish," Janice said gravely.

"I wish I could have been there… "

"No," was her curt response, "Paris is disintegrating. The war is destroying it little by little, like a disease. Walls are marked with blood from executions. I saw buildings blown apart and vandalized. People's homes were set on fire while the Nazis enjoyed their obnoxious parties; drunks and music roaring through café windows… "

"It's not much different here, y'know," Melinda mused, pouring herself another drink, "I mean… we're not so exotic as Paris. A little town in the mountains, all alone, but there's always… a sense of loss… "

Janice stared at the cognac in her glass, lost herself in the dark liquid, "I know the feeling… "

The space between them stilled again, silence wrapped around them in a cloud, mouths filled with cotton. Melinda gulped her drink and Janice watched her with interest. She felt awkward at her own curiosity, knowing indulgence was vital, dulled thought and pain. Life was disappointing. She lit another cigarette.

"So?" Melinda said, her voice a bit more groggy.

"So, what? Janice answered.

"So what brings you to this part of Germany?" Melinda peered out from the rim of her glass.

"I should ask you the same thing," Janice replied, raising an eyebrow in question.

Melinda smirked and straightened her posture, preparing a thorough rendition. Janice watched Melinda's exaggerated movements with a faint smile. The cognac settled into her veins, smoothed the tension and coated her mind in a vague numbness. Janice knew her tolerance, having spoiled the bliss of intoxication on street curbs and alleyways as her body repelled its internal abuse and rebelled against her rebellion in youth. Melinda's movement was a tad more animated and Janice could see the obvious signs of drunkenness.

"You remember me leaving Greece?" Mel asked.

"How could I forget?" Janice replied, exhaling a puff of smoke toward the ceiling. Melinda smiled and nodded. Images and sensations seeped into her mind: the fragments of memory convoluted by numbness and alcohol. She recalled the faint bitterness of the air that day, stale from the onset of winter, and the look in Janice's eyes that scarce hid her displeasure. _Come back soon. I'll be waiting. Working on the scrolls…_

Janice frowned, unsettled by the silence.

"Mel?"

Melinda blinked, head swayed slightly as she recovered from her reverie. "…yeah?"

Janice grinned and shook her head, and Melinda slinked further down the headboard to lie flat on the pillows, her glass abandoned on the table.

"Did that meeting of yours in Berlin work out?" Janice asked, gazing down at her friend affectionately.

"It did," she replied, "That professor had the most amazing collection of scrolls. Roman. Stories of Caesar and his rivals. You should have seen them."

"You authenticated them?"

"Of course. And translated 'em."

"He must have been impressed."

"He was," Melinda replied, "But he expected as much, I suppose. Jack recommended me to him."

"Jack?" Janice's eyebrows arched.

"Yeah," Melinda smiled sleepily, "The professor was a friend of Jack's family for some time. He trusted Jack and arranged the meeting. The scrolls are now on display in Trier."

"I'd love to see them when the war is over," Janice mused, dejection in her voice, "and talk to this professor of yours. Does he live near here?"

"He lived in Berlin a while… " Mel replied.

"And now?"

"We haven't heard from him since… " she said, turning to the bottle of alcohol and straightening her position to pour another drink.

A pause transpired between them before Janice asked quietly, "Was he Jewish?"

Melinda took a long sip of alcohol, eyes heavy lidded, pupils dilated in the dim light.

"Yeah."

Janice cleared her throat. "So you went from Berlin to this place?" She asked, anxious; the knowledge of her captivity briefly nested into her conscious.

"No," Melinda said, adjusting to lie back down on the pillows and stare at the ceiling, "I went back to Greece."

"You did?"

"Yeah… " Mel replied, distant, "I know now where you went… why you left with no word."

Janice swallowed hard, rocking faintly as she struggled for a response. Dabbing a smouldering cigarette into the ashtray, she conceded.

"I'm sorry," she said, the whisper barely audible.

"The strangest thing… " Melinda continued, "was that the hotel we stayed in was shut down completely. I couldn't get anyone to tell me why. I asked about the people who stayed in the rooms and no one knew anything. The man behind the counter in the café across the street mentioned a fire in the restaurant downstairs… "

Her voice trailed into a hush as her eyes lethargically closed, with equal slowness reopened. Janice kept her gaze away from her friend and settled onto the pillows as her fatigue returned. Staring at the wall, she counted the stones.

"Do you think we'll ever feel the things we felt before?" Melinda asked, the level of her voice breaking with the imminence of sleep.

Janice frowned, "What do you mean?"

"You know… before the war. When we lived in America. When you wanted to finish your father's work and I wanted the same. Normal. Will we ever feel that way again?"

Janice stole a glance at her friend, saw the peaceful, porcelain face with eyes closed. In the privacy of her mind, her voice replied angrily, _no_. Resigned, she returned her mournful gaze to the ceiling, "Of course we will… when the war ends."

She heard the rustling of bed sheets as Melinda turned to look at her, rolled onto her side. "What if we don't?" Melinda asked quietly, "What if the war never ends and we're trapped here? And we can't go back to how we used to be… "

Janice covered her face with her hands and gradually lifted them up to rub her forehead. "I don't know, Melinda," she answered, voice wavering with emotion.

Another pause. Melinda closed her eyes. "Janice?"

"Yeah?"

"I missed you."

She bit her bottom lip, "I know." Cleared her throat. "I missed you, too."

"Can I stay here? I don't want to get up."

Silence as Janice slowly ran her hand through her auburn hair, pursed her lips and relented, "Okay."

Janice clamped her hand over her mouth as stray tears slipped from the corners of her eyes to collect on the pillow. She ached with a bitter void and was at the mercy of fate, chained to her assignment by forcible duty. Her body was branded with mysterious scars that she tried, but could not remember getting. And she was empty, left wanting for the day she could return to America, to piece back together the shattered form of her abandoned life. Home. Freedom. Peace.

***

Roused from sleep, her eyes slowly focused and the diluted fog cleared. She looked about confused, the light unchanged, the air of the same frigid, stale quality that hung inside the little room. There was nothing to suggest it was morning or that any time had passed at all, except for the key that turned in the lock and the emergence of a figure behind it with two cups of coffee. Melinda stood, smoothed her clothing with nervous, controlling hands and looked about embarrassed as Jack offered her a mug.

She took it gratefully, stared back at him jaded. He scanned the room, saw Janice sleeping and took the other coffee for himself. Beside the bed, the empty bottle of cognac sat next to glass tumblers stained with rust coloured smears. His eyes narrowed at Melinda as she rushed out of the room. He followed, locking the door behind him and turned to see her beneath the soft light in the cellar, shadows arched across her tall frame, eyes downcast.

He walked in front of her and waited for her to respond, sipping his coffee gingerly. She refused to look at him and stared at the stone ground. He lost his patience.

"You were drinking last night?" Jack asked, an irritated edge in his voice. She merely nodded. He ran a hand through his hair and sighed, "You know you shouldn't be drinking." Melinda nodded, rubbed her forehead with slender fingers and took a sip from her coffee.

"Melinda, it's not that I don't trust you, it's-"

"You care… " she replied in a low voice, "I know." He shuffled his feet and bit his bottom lip, swallowed his coffee in loud gulps. He decided to change the subject, gone weary of the silence.

"How is she doing?"

Melinda took a sip of her coffee, the lingering bitter taste in her mouth made her want for the sharp, warm cognac, "Very well, considering what she's been through. I can't even imagine… "

"She was well cleaned up before you saw her," Jack said, looking back at the room, "I saw her straight out of a fight."

"She handled herself well enough in Greece… "

Jack shook his head solemnly, "No… this was different."

The thought echoed in her mind and nausea pulsed through her forehead. Melinda knew it was true. Life was different. Janice changed, and for all the nights and days spent together, she did not know what had become of her friend. She was told there was a fire at the hotel in Greece, that Janice Covington's room was destroyed. The Janice she knew was a dissolving memory.

She too, had changed. Melinda Pappas, the quaint American girl. Usurped. Ruined by war and murder and heartache. But Jack took care of her. His compassion drew her to him and his fierce devotion kept her at his side when she could not fathom being alone.

"She was a wreck."

Melinda blinked, hearing Jack's voice in her conscious, shrugging off her reverie. "She needs rest," she said.

Jack nodded, placed two fingers beneath Melinda's chin to tilt her face toward his. Their heights a perfect match, he rested his forehead upon hers, exotic brown eyes staring level at cold, piercing blue. He placed a hand on her upper arm, rubbed gently with his thumb and kissed her cheek. Her gaze was forlorn, hinted with suffering and he spoke softly to console her. "She'll be fine."

She managed a slight nod, paralysed by the lie. He bushed his lips against hers; a languid, familiar warmth. She tried to relax into it, to crave the sensation of it as she had countless times before. The contact broke and a peculiar guilt surfaced, collected thick at the back of her throat. Unnerved, she turned from him, edged toward the stairs. He sipped his coffee and followed. It was better not to pry.

"What time is it?" She asked, glassy eyes toward the wooden staircase that led to the kitchen and larder, to the bar countertop and the café floors where soldiers and citizens mingled, shared in sympathy and loathing, divided by loyalties.

"7:30," he mumbled, mouth latched onto the rim of the coffee mug.

She sighed. "The café will be open soon. What needs to be done?"

"Not much. I'm sure Ben and Helen could use your help with the inventory. I'm going to start more baking."

"Okay."

Empty footsteps on hollowed maple creaked, bodies ascending to the world outside, welcoming into their consciousnesses the faces of customers deformed by worry and wear. The usual clients would arrive: friends, acquaintances, resistance members that were only boys and men and women of the village with little to offer other than a few marks and grieved smiles. They would share knowing glances and secrets between them, swap information and plans through code and signals, and delight in the comfort of Jack's home-cooking. A bottle of wine brought genuine laughter when they could afford it, authentic warmth in the pit of their bellies -the aching sweetness of mundane acts that brought a little delusion. A little hope. Their sons were not dying at the Russian front. Their friends were not disappearing, sent packing on rail lines. The weakened enemies would fall, and the blame would fall on someone else. Shut the cacophony of violence outside glass doors and take in the comfort of a haven contained.

The Nazi soldiers would come in, and some were quite agreeable. Guided by the grip of trauma, they would sit, in packs, hateful eyes upon them. They were the transfers from the Russian front. They cowered beneath the General and ached for escape, kept their silence for their paychecks and went home. In the privacy of an empty café and under the influence of drinks, their pain would surface, grieved and shrunken eyes that sunk into their brains, staring at candle centerpieces unblinking as the flame flickered on the wick. Their uniforms cleaned of blood, there was something they had seen, a horror that they would not share. War was alive in their heads as they looked back with tortured children's eyes, boy's eyes. Youths with baby fat on their faces hid behind their SS caps. _Another drink, Jack_, they'd say with wavering voices or, _You there, boy! A drink! Good boy. Strong Austrian boy. _Or _Helen -Melinda, the usual please. I'll drink to you. Bella ragazza! _

Then the Nazi General would barge in with his customary crowd of the worst kind: soldiers that shot the light bulbs out to spare their aggravated hangovers. They were old and young, smart and stupid, German and a fair-haired, blue-eyed Jewish man of privilege that despite his power, brandished on his lapel the mark of the yellow star. _Juden._ When they came in, Ben would hide in the wine cellar and Melinda with him, for the General craved their attentions the most: they were easy to provoke and humiliate. Jack endured the General's petty torments while Helen served his company drinks and food. Other Nazi soldiers sunk into the corners or turned their backs with stiffened shoulders: afraid, disgusted, embarrassed. The Jewish man, a snitch for the Nazis, would belittle Jack, _the Jewish looking man,_ he'd say. And he'd let everyone know that he was better, _of course_, than _Jack the peasant_, _the stuttering fool, the haggard little man, _and when he was drunk enough: _the beggar who fucked that Austrian whore. _Jack would ignore them, scurry back to the bar knowing that each of the officers knew Melinda well: all the details of her body down to its faintest scars.

Melinda cleaned the bar countertop and sighed dejectedly as she arranged the empty tumblers and porcelain mugs in a line. Ben, with his white apron, notepad and pencil tucked into the front pocket, walked over to the front door, wiped the long, blonde bangs from his eyes and turned the display window sign to '_Open_'.

Splayed on the bed, Janice stared bleakly at the ceiling. The sheets wrapped around her body pinned her to the mattress, tightly wound around her legs and torso. A captive in the castle, she filled her mind with thoughts of escape. But in asylum, she grew bored.

The atmosphere in the tiny room rarely changed and she would listen for the voices above her head, the calamity of footsteps and the muffled drone of a radio perpetually tuned to news on the German front, nationalists yelling through the little speaker. Earlier, Melinda brought her lunch and cleared up the dishes when she was done. With lunch came an array of books that Mel took from the bookshelves in her bedroom.

"Got you some of my old books to read," she said, "I'm afraid that's all I can bring you without arousing suspicion. All of those books would be burned if they found them. Be careful with them." Janice thanked her and after Melinda locked the door, she scoured the stacks of books, eyes consuming the titles and authors as she thought of what to read:

- Ulysses, Joyce is too complicated. Swann's Way, Proust is too French. The Picture of Dorian Gray, sounds boring. The Odyssey, I've read it. A Farewell To Arms, no…

She lifted the heavy stack to reveal the last book, a hunter green hardcover over yellowing, fibrous pages. _War Poets:_ _A Collection. _Her brows furrowed and she opened the cover to the index where the names of the poets were listed: Hemingway, McCrae, Owen, Sassoon, above the embedded print was scribbled in faded ink: _Jack_. She ran her tongue along her bottom lip. Poetry from the first war. Her lungs strained, anxiety invaded her body. She turned to another page, examined the index. The titles flared out of the paper, pained words stained with patriotism, trembling hands that sought to find glory in their suffering. Or perhaps they were all outraged, all mirrors of the horror reflected in her mind, aflame with the rage of Caliban: the morbid epiphany of truth. 

Janice tossed the book at the end of the bed and it bounced across the mattress, landing open on its spine. She dared not look, reached for Wilde instead and became absorbed in the elaborate prose; read to drain away the listlessness in her bones, moving onto another novel when she finished.

Hours passed into the night as she wandered into sleep with her dreams consumed by portraits of twisted souls and disfigured heroes. Time melted into moments of quiet and fear, lapses of distorted images and consuming dread. She imagined her own face, the tortured mask it bore and wondered if she would ever escape her tormented history. Bars appeared around her, enclosed her in a cage as panic flooded her chest, heart beating wildly. She gripped the bars and rattled them, cold iron numbing her skin. They would not give. Beyond them, dark oblivion and danger looming, camouflaged predators watched from the shadows.

She collapsed at the bottom of the cage, felt the frozen stone beneath her exposed skin. Her eyes travelled down to her hips, searched out the poorly sewn stitches on her pelvis. She lifted her shirt to expose the wound and saw her flesh: hollow and empty of organs. The gash was clean of blood, covered in plastic-like lacquer that shimmered as she turned her hip to look through the gaping hole to the ground. Panicked, she covered the void with a hand, disoriented and afraid, hoping the missing flesh would reappear if she ignored the striking ugliness. Her eyes searched frantically but the cage was empty. Air and stone. Her hands groped the ground for something to hold onto, palms gathering handfuls of dust as fear swelled to overtake her. And then warmth enveloped her, spooned behind her as slender arms encircled her. Comfort.

Moist breath on her neckline, behind her ear, made the hair on the back of her neck rise. Her hand reached out and felt the smooth flesh of a warm, naked thigh. Her fingers trailed upward, fascinated by the heat and the blood flowing beneath the flesh, the live pulse that ticked through solid muscle. Her body transitioned, unable to feel the cold ground as she was cradled. Incubated. Her fingertips reached a sharp pelvic bone and flared hips. She turned in the embrace, yearning to see behind her, and as she moved, the figure shattered.

Awake. The bed was empty; stale air pervaded the shallow lit room, the buzz of the light bulb filled her ears. At her feet, a pile of books strewn beside her ankles, spines creased and pages scoured for content. The open book of war poetry sat vulnerable, unperturbed by the disarray or her unconscious movement. She remained still, shrouded in the cotton sheets that wound tightly around her in fever-sleep.

***

The morning passed without incident, the familiar droning of footsteps and customers' voices filled her ears. Melinda brought Janice breakfast, tried to start a conversation and was called back onto the café floor. Janice accepted it without much thought; reality began to set its form. Like the morning and night before, she sank her teeth into hearty bread dipped in thickened broth, the flavour rushed onto her tongue as the sponge-like bread melted in the heat. She ate and read throughout the day, tuned out the sound of the buzzing light. She was rarely visited except for Melinda bringing her food and coming back to clean up dishes. She filled her mind with the familiar tales of Odysseus, reading the words she'd read before to assuage her boredom.

Time became a complex quantity, defined by the appearance of food but otherwise stretched beyond recognition. As the dinner hour approached, Janice became impatient, paced the room. She raked her brittle nails across dry skin. Her breathing grew heavy. She envisioned her veins, parched and shriveled. _Weak blood, weak blood._ Her heart raced. As she turned, each wall became a copied blur of the other. Reality was slipping away from her, twisting into a whirl of confusion and madness. She needed air. Something new, something unlike the stale poison circulating the little room. She wanted the biting cut of frost or the unbearable thickness of heat: anything but the same air she breathed, any place but the cellar room.

Suddenly, footsteps snapped her attention toward the door. Counting the footsteps, she measured several bodies but lost count. Anxiety rose up from her gut. Stomping feet echoed flatly on the stone. Combat boots and rubber soles. Hushed voices and then a door closing at the top of the staircase: the larder exit to the cellar. She heard them approach, felt the static essence of live bodies poised in waiting, gathered outside her door. Predators. She pressed her palms flat against the door, felt the presence of the living flesh outside, bodies with vivacious pulses reverberating through the air and stone and metal.

The wine rack shifted away from the door as the lock was invaded, scratched about inside, and the tumblers noisily turned. Rusted hinges groaned in sloth, loathe to be put to use, and Janice felt her pulse lump in her throat. Her hands tightened into fists. She would kill them if they dared to touch her again. She would not be taken back to the castle. She would not be taken.

From the doorframe, a man in gray peasant clothing emerged, short trench coat radiated the scent of winter air, cedar trees and snow. Curt, greasy-brown strands stuck out of his workman's cap. Fang-like teeth shined chipped and disfigured behind thin lips. Ice-blue eyes regarded her with a hint of mockery. He lifted his cap and brought it next to his heart, bowed toward her, "_Good evening, your Majesty_."

Jack appeared in the doorframe and booted Braun in the ass. "Enough, Braun," he said, edging into the room.

Braun rubbed his backside with both hands and turned to scowl at Jack, "Ah, Guinevere, your knight hath arrived."

Jack ignored him, approached Janice casually. "How are you feeling?"

"Fine," she replied, hid the vertigo and ebbing adrenaline, "what's going on?"

Braun piped up from behind them, "Didn't tell her, eh, Jacky? What kind of Galahad are you? Fear not, Miss. French aren't you? Ol' _Jacky-boy_ is what _you_ might call _en retard_."

The corner of Janice's lips turned up in the beginnings of a smile and she pursed her lips to disguise it. Jack crossed his arms and narrowed his eyes at Braun. "She's American," he mumbled.

"Ah! American, eh?" Braun said, returning the knife-like gaze, "Well then, that makes _much_ more sense! Tearing through a Nazi castle alone! And I thought she was the Lady Réjane, when she was really Annie Oakley!"

Braun turned and headed into the wine cellar, gesturing at Janice and Jack to follow him. Janice approached the doorway, and paused, turning to Jack, "Does he ever stop?"

Jack grimaced, "Unfortunately no. But he's a damn good soldier, and a good man. Seems he was born a jackass though."

Janice nodded, her posture stiffening. Patting Jack on the shoulder, she spoke freely, "Thanks for helping me… back at the castle. I owe you big time… "

"No," Jack waved his hand in the air, "no you don't. Did what I had to do."

He offered her a kind smile and she returned it, walking out of the room to join the congregation of men in the center of the wine cellar. All stood, peasants, arranged in a tight-packed semi-circle crowded around Braun. He stood at the front of it as though on stage. Helen sat at the back on spare café chairs with Melinda. Jack and Janice moved toward them, and Helen caught them approaching. Melinda followed her diverted gaze and found the two struggling through the crowd. Janice met the fascinated stare and caught Mel's infectious smile. Jack walked slightly ahead of her, and when Melinda rose to greet them both, he planted a loving kiss on her lips. Melinda blushed and turned away from him as he greeted Helen with a friendly grin. Melinda stole a glance at Janice and saw her staring at the front of the crowd.

She walked beside Janice, brushed her shoulder.

"Hullo, Mel," Janice said and her eyes lingered on her.

"Janice," Melinda smiled back coyly, reading the expression.

"Are you gonna tell me what's going on or do I have to keep guessing?" Janice crossed her arms in front of her chest.

"Well... " Melinda began, rocking on her heels.

"Alright! Quiet, the lot of you animals!" Braun yelled over the crowd.

Melinda leaned in close to her and whispered, "You're one of us now."

"Tonight's the big night," Braun continued, "Time to take one back for the true Germans! Genuine sons of the Motherland! I take it you boys brought equipment?" The peasants nodded; some proudly revealed the gamut of weapons hidden beneath their peasant trenches and cloaks.

Braun looked around approvingly, "Good! Pray you don't have to use them. Though, these are desperate times and desperate men must do what is necessary to survive… but for Lady Luck to offer us relief! Tonight we take what we like. Antibiotics. Food. Ammunition. Take it all. The storehouse in the woods is just outside the village walls. We're going to destroy it. It's guarded. Naturally. But the Nazis will be preoccupied with a little distraction cooked up by our very own _Prinzessin_… _eh, Melinda_?"

The peasants snickered and turned toward her in the crowd. Melinda blushed and bowed her head in acknowledgement. Braun gestured toward Janice from the front of the assembly, "America sends us gifts! Uncle Sam is generous indeed. For not only do we have the beautiful Melinda and our darling marksman Jack, but a Nazi slayer! A pile of Nazi corpses, or so legend has it, lie dead at the hands of this woman. What soldier is more a hero than this? She will accompany us through the woods as part of our infantry."

Dissenting voices and groans echoed off of the cellar walls. Janice scanned the crowd, eyes narrowing, and crossed her arms over her chest as she listened.

-_ Surely, you're joking, Braun! _

- _A woman in the infantry? _

- _Look at how frail the young girl is! How small! _

- _Melinda is of different stock. An exception. Women were not designed to handle war. _

"Silence the lot of you, savages!" Braun shouted above them, "You should be sent to the Congo to get your hands cut off! We have Jack's word that the girl is a natural killer!"

- _You are mad, Braun_.

"America sent this woman here," he said, "there must be something _precious_ about her. Yes, precious… like gold. Greedy again, that rich Uncle -wants something from us. But first they will have to give us a little incentive… " The crowd went silent.

Jack frowned, "What are you talking about, Braun?"

"Come now, _Jacky_, just a little business. But I'm afraid that will have to wait... for now she needs an identity in case she is discovered." His eyes searched for hers in the crowd, and when he found Helen sitting on the bench, he directed his speech at her, "You are responsible for forging the young woman's papers. Make her German." Helen nodded.

"Is that alright with you, fair lady?" He said with an exaggerated bow toward Janice.

She sneered, "It will have to do now, won't it?"

"Good," he said clapping his hands and rubbing them together, "then it's settled. Melinda! Gather together a team that will go with you to the square. Preferably soldiers with a good arm. You know how easy it is to miss with potato mashers."

The crowd dispersed; men surrounded Melinda vying to be chosen. She looked for Janice and grabbed her wrist before she vanished into the crowd. Leaning close, head bent, she was aflame with anxiety, "Come back safe." Janice covered Melinda's hand with her own but did not reply. She turned away and ascended the stairs to join Jack and Braun.

Jack surveyed the gathering soldiers in the kitchen; the sound of loading guns clicked in the semi-quiet as each man concentrated on preparing his firearm. Braun handed Janice a loaded pistol and winked at her. Janice rolled her eyes and took the gun. He chuckled, stared at her intently, "The Ice Queen melts… "

Janice tilted a pistol toward his chin.

"Don't waste your bullets, your Highness," he quipped, "I'm merely the royal _clown_."

The corner of her mouth turned up in a menacing grin, "Then, peace! You rogue."

He smiled broadly, eyes bright, "Aha!" He winked, "As witty a piece of Eve's flesh as I've ever seen!"

She smiled genuinely, "Shakespeare?"

He nodded, "Is it not a requirement in America? Fine Art, I mean."

Her expression soured.

"Well at least you're not illiterate." He smirked, and snapped a magazine into a Luger pistol. "Jack has faith in you," he said. She stared at him, unsure of his sincerity.

"And you?"

He smiled enigmatically, "Jack and Melinda cannot both be wrong."

"Melinda?" Her brows furrowed.

He nodded. "One would think you were some messiah, the way she speaks of you… of your exploits in Greece."

The war had not destroyed everything. "Idealism, of course," he continued, "there are no saints anymore. No heroes."

"I think we have enough," Jack said, walking over to Braun and counting the bodies in his group. "We should leave. Melinda will be heading to the square."

"To the woods, then!" Braun said merrily, holding his pistol aloft. He walked toward the front door and peeled it open, pressed his body along the doorframe and peered down the street. Finding it vacant, he signaled the rest of the men to follow. Jack and Janice stepped out, searching for targets. Braun stepped down onto the cobblestone street and the men filed out, eyes probing the shadows for danger. The last soldier shut the door; adolescent eyes burning with ambition beneath his dark cap. And behind the experienced soldiers, Ben stealthily followed. For manhood. For glory.

***

They wound through the labyrinthine streets, through the shadows, keeping far from the reach of the streetlamps. Footsteps silenced by layers of snow and mud, they entered the woods through the back passages of the bordered village. Flashlight beams flickered on the horizon, paralleled and tossed from side to side scouring the darkness. Braun gestured toward the group and backed into the shadows. They waited. Officers in the distance were approaching.

A noise from inside the village walls erupted with a cloud of orange fire, the ground rumbling from the force of an explosion. The flashlight beams whipped in the direction of the noise as they bobbed in the hands of the Nazi officers. The men barked orders at each other, scrambled toward the gates in confusion and rage. First two. Then four. Then another, loading rifles as they ran.

Jack swallowed. Melinda's distraction. He removed the Luger from its holster and walked up to Braun, shared a knowing glance. Minutes passed as they secured a path. Braun led, followed by Jack and then Janice, scurrying between the trees, seeking refuge behind dead trunks and large cedars. Janice signaled: _all clear._ Braun gestured toward the rest of the men. Ducking into the darkness, they travelled quickly. The storehouse was in the distance ahead.

It was small, made of rows of cedar trunks and slabs of cedar wood, reminiscent of cabins in the Alps. Jack and Braun walked the perimeter. It was deserted. Janice surveyed the doors, quickly unhooking the open padlock and dropping it into the snow. With the aid of the other peasants, she pulled open the heavy doors and they raced inside with the thrill of adrenaline in their veins, gluttonous eyes coveting the shelves of medicines and bread and firearms. They did not steal for relief, taking as people deprived of care or luxury. It was sabotage. Defiance. Anger. Power. They wanted it all. They wanted it back.

Jack and Janice stood at opposite ends of the storehouse watching for guards. Braun sauntered into the complex, a smile forming on his lips as he reverently perused the busy _Resistance_. He swayed slightly as he walked, the arrogant manifestation of revenge about him, nostrils flaring with his new authority. The men were scrambling; frenzied hands clawed at the supplies, clumsy movements broke glass vials of medicine and shattered bottles of wine. Destruction. He inhaled a savoured breath, his smile broadening, voice whispering,

"Now is the winter of _our_ discontent… "

His eyes landed on a shorter figure, unfamiliar to him in profile. Braun frowned. The face was too young. Curiosity struck the youth, and he turned to face Braun, arms full of stolen supplies. Braun's eyes narrowed at the boy and he turned to head toward the door, approaching Jack.

"Are we so uncivilized as to enlist children in our infantry, Jack?" Braun asked, flicking a piece of food from his teeth.

Jack stared at him incredulously, brows furrowed, "No."

"Then why is that boy of yours rummaging about in the storehouse, eh?"

"What boy?"

"That Benjamin," Braun said casually, amused as the horror appeared on Jack's face, "Blonde. Quick on his feet. Hardworking. A good boy. Hardly have to wait for an order at the café before he's back at my table with it… "

Jack cursed, pushed Braun aside and headed into the storehouse. Braun continued to talk into the air, voice and manner caustic, "Oh, but these enemies of mine… bring them here and slay them in my presence!"

Jack scanned the storehouse and located the boy instantly. He lumbered toward him, furious and afraid, "Ben! What the hell are you doing here!?"

Ben started and swallowed, bit his lip. He straightened his body to stress his size, looking up to meet Jack's angry gaze.

"I'm defending my German honour," he said simply, "by helping the _Resistance_. By helping you and Melinda, and Helen."

"Goddammit, Ben, you _know_ it's too dangerous. You shouldn't have come here!"

"I am not a child anymore, Jack! I'm fifteen! To my father and to God, I am a man. This is my first chance to defend my country."

Jack sighed, bit the inside of his cheek as he thought of a response, "A man should be at home protecting the people he loves."

"I cannot protect all that I love when I am caged."

"Does Helen know you're here?"

"She'll find out soon enough."

"She's going to be furious with you!" Spittle flew from Jack's mouth.

"She'll be pleased when I come home a hero."

Braun wandered into the storehouse, carrying a bag of empty glass bottles, rags and lighter fluid. He began to fill each one, stuffing the rag into the bottleneck after filling the bottles halfway. He passed each Resistance member, mumbling to them, and they turned to exit the storehouse, arms clutching bags of supplies. He looked toward the doorway as Janice approached. She followed the _Resistance_ to protect them.

Braun approached Jack and Ben, thrusting a pair of bottles at Jack's chest.

"Excuse me, for barging in -I do believe that neither of you shall be heroes or asses unless we live through the rest of the night. So unless you would like to continue this conversation in hell… "

He turned to Ben, "You are to follow _Little Jean _and her band of merry men toward the café… "

To Jack, "And you are going to help me torch the place."

Jack opened his mouth to protest, but closed it, feeling uneasy as the minutes lagged on.

"Go, Ben," he said staring down at the boy.

Jack fixed his vision on Ben for as long as he was able, watching him assimilate into the crowd of Resistance members. Janice flinched as she recognised him. She looked back at the storehouse with hesitation, but seeing only darkness, returned her attention to the group.

She crouched low, walked ahead of them to clear a path. Standing guard at the storehouse, the sight of explosions disturbed her. Melinda. How long had she been there? Ten minutes… Fifteen. There were too many guards that ran into the village. Her thoughts gnawed at her. She stopped and let the group continue to the café, turning back into the chaos.

Braun lit the end of the rag and tossed a glass bottle through the storehouse window. He heard the bottle smash on the wooden floor and the voluble gust as the flames ignited on the oil, bathing the cabin in flames. He lit another one and tossed it through the front door. Around the back, Jack did the same, lighting and throwing petrol bombs until the flames stormed through the windows toward the roof. He met up with Braun.

"Let's get out of here," he said, "The Nazis will see the fire."

Braun and Jack began to jog toward the stone walls that bordered the town, feet crunching on the snow. Jack glanced at the fire, apprehension creeping into his face. He turned to Braun as they jogged.

"You know. I didn't check for explosives in that shed."

Braun chuckled, "Ah, _Jacky_. The Jew in you always expects the worst. If there were explosives in that shack, these hawk's eyes would have seen them!"

Immense heat erupted at their backs; a violent force launched them off of their feet and into the snow. The debris cascaded down around them, burning, caught in the tree branches and set the cedars aflame. The embers burnt their skin, the flash from the explosion left their flesh reddened. Braun cursed. Jack turned to him, fuming,

"Fucking hawk's eyes, eh!"

Braun recovered slowly, "Curse me all you want! We set out to destroy the storehouse and look-" He waved his hands toward the rubble, "See? Destroyed!"

"The whole forest is going to burn!"

"Long enough for us to get back to the café undetected!"

The two men staggered to their feet, looking up with widened eyes as they stared down the shaft of a gun barrel. It clicked; a bullet launched into the chamber. Live.

"Don't move!"

A Nazi officer.

"Turn around and put your hands up."

Jack glanced terrified at Braun, "You ever get tired of being wrong?"

"Shut up!" The officer barked. "No talking!"

Jack and Braun glanced at each other briefly and faced away from the officer. Jack swallowed repeatedly, chewed on his bottom lip as his hands trembled. Braun stared down at the snow.

The officer's eyes absorbed the scenery in haste. He aimed the gun, "The famous _Resistance,_ is it?" A sneer. "I'll only need _one _of you."

Jack squeezed his eyes shut. Braun was silent.

A gunshot sounded from behind him. Jack heard the body drop. He clenched his teeth, hissing breaths laboured through the barrier. He opened one eye, stared to his right. Braun was kneeling with his eyes shut tight, mumbling to himself quietly. Jack's brows furrowed and he turned to look behind him.

The Nazi officer lay in the snow, the contents of his head spilling onto the ice and mud. Beyond him, Janice bounded forward with a Luger at arm's length. She slipped along the moistened ground, reached them panting and bent over, resting her weight on her knees. Braun turned around, the realisation of what transpired behind him gradually surfaced on his face.

"Aha! Lady Luck!" He got to his feet with a wide grin on his face, "Not so vindictive as I thought her to be, though a bit _shorter_ than I expected... "

"You're welcome," She replied and offered a hand to Jack as he stumbled to his feet.

As Braun urged them forward; Jack gazed at Janice reverently, "Now we're even."

She smiled, "Let's get out of here."

The forest burned in patches. Fires spread from the tops of trees to the watery snow around the trunks. Alarms blared from the speakers posted around the village wall and the lookouts. They watched the Nazi soldiers floundering. Trucks sped from the mouth of the stone wall onto the mud, loaded with more officers, a fire hose and water tanks. As they slipped inside the stone perimeter, Janice looked toward the town square, searching for a sign of Melinda's crew. Each time she glanced toward it the square was empty. She watched Jack, noticing he too impulsively turned in the direction of the square, worry etched into the creases of squinting brown eyes.

"She's probably at the café," Janice whispered to him.

"Probably," he replied, still staring in vain.

He turned back and saw that Braun had disappeared far ahead of them. He swallowed, unnerved, heard the shouts and the chaos that emanated from the forest. The reckless mission would have consequences. They might all have been compromised. And Ben, too young to be fighting would have already seen too much, and Helen was going to seethe at him for letting the boy go along. And Melinda…

Jack stopped suddenly, craned his neck to hear. Footsteps. His eyes darted to the corner, saw the emerging shadow projected from the streetlamps on the cobblestones. He only had a moment. He turned, seized Janice and backed into the shadows: a narrow alleyway where he barely fit them both. His hand clamped over her mouth, stifled her protest. She struggled as he held her down.

Confused at first, Janice resisted him, stared at him peculiarly and opened her mouth to speak. The hand came up and covered her mouth. She felt the pressure of it at the corners of her lips, the restraint blocking and holding. She blinked; the water behind her eyes collected and wiped clean the contents of her vision. The streets dissolved and the darkness, the lights and the smell of smoke became nothing. She felt hard metal pressed at her back and behind her head, flat and uncomfortable. Her nostrils flared with the scent of tin and steel and copper, a chemical that she could not name. At the pressure on her mouth, the taste of earth and rot was wedged onto her tongue with a piece of wood that the guard forced across her lips, pushed down until the corners of her mouth ached.

And then she saw him. The doctor with the white curls that bubbled from his bald head, the white coat, the cold eyes, the gloves and the scalpel. He spoke in German but she was too frightened to understand him. The blade had her attention. The waistband of her trousers was cut with scissors, a little patch removed to expose her pelvis. A light, hot and blinding above her forehead bore into her eyes, drove her to look down and stare at the little blade descending onto the soft flesh. She screamed and tossed her head. More words in German. Inexplicable pain. A line of scarlet emerging slowly, slowly beneath the blade.

She collapsed in his grasp and Jack grunted as he felt the sudden weight. The soldier had past the alleyway in haste. They were hidden. They were safe. His hand left Janice's mouth and he turned her in his arms, whispered to her, shook her a little. Nothing. He swallowed, panicked, looked for signs of breathing. She was pale, her eyes closed. He repeated her name. Nothing.

Jack cursed and lifted her into his arms, manoeuvred through the alley into the streets. He could not get to the town square with her. He had to get back to the café. She was breathing, he noticed, as he kept a brisk pace through the winding paths, wandering through the shortcuts, up and down stone stairs in the light. If he was discovered, he would say she was injured by the explosions. Some civilian casualty. A victim of sabotage. He ducked into another lane.

Dread seized him and he glanced up from his feet. A truck revved as it turned into the top of the road ahead of him. Between the white high beams a figure stood, illuminated in silhouette and petrified. The truck barrelled onward and the engine filled his ears.

"Hey!" He called to the figure ahead. "Move out of the way!"

But there was no answer. He tried again, struggling with Janice in his arms. The truck came closer. Jack moved himself away from harm, holding Janice close to him. Before the silhouette hit the front of the truck, another came from the shadows and pushed him out of the way. The hero slammed against the bumper and the grill, rolled beneath the tires, flattened once and then again. Crimson tracks marked the vehicles path, and the break lights flared in the darkness. A Nazi jumped out, and his head snapped up at the live figure standing over the other. Jack saw their faces and on impulse ran into the street, driven by profound terror.

Ben stood over the body, stricken and shaking. He stared: a dull glance that mixed numbness with denial. He did not see the Nazi approach. The Nazi looked down and saw the man bleeding with limbs broken and obtusely twisted, head crushed and gaping and inflamed. A mask of horror overcame him and he looked from the boy to the body and back. The Nazi glanced up at Jack and their eyes met. They knew each other. He frequented the café. A good customer. A quiet man, the Nazi soldier.

Jack saw agony spread across the hardening mask of the soldier's face, but he turned away quickly, his fear directed at the body. Jack swallowed as tears gathered in his eyes, his throat was raw. He ran his hands through Janice's short hair absently, searched for comfort. He gripped her tighter. She whimpered. Brains and skid marks and entrails. The dead body was Braun.

"I'm sorry, Jack," the Nazi said, and he looked at him imploring.

Jack simply stared, tears slipping down his cheeks as he felt the cold pinch of winter air upon his skin. Ben began to weep, full of fear, guilt and confusion. The Nazi frowned, saw Janice and then looked back at the body. Then the boy. In his throat, he felt the bile rise, his mind struggling to ascertain the truth. It returned to him, an echo in his head: it was his fault, his fault completely. He hesitated and then turned on his heels, running for the truck, abandoning the scene behind him. The engine revved and the gears huffed as the vehicle sped off into the forest: the paramedic truck rushing to bring the firemen aid.

The sounds of anarchy outside the village walls seemed somehow muffled in Jack's ears. He was still staring. He glanced up at Ben, tried to remember what it was he was doing. He had to get the boy home. And Janice. His responsibilities. He remembered. With a shaking voice he instructed Ben, nudged him forward when the boy would not move.

"Braun?" Ben said as he glimpsed down, tears turning his vision into blotches of colour.

"We have to get back to the café, Ben."

Ben stumbled a little as Jack pushed him onward. The boy hardly moved.

"Please, Ben, my friend is sick."

"He's sick. Do I get the doctor?" The boy looked up at him, delirious.

"Braun is dead, Ben," Jack said, pushing the boy again, "We have to go."

"No he's not. No, no, he's not. He needs a doctor."

He would kick the boy if he had to but Ben obeyed him, understood the nudges and the prompts to carry on homeward. They trudged on until they reached the café and Ben asked again if Braun needed a doctor. Jack shook his head over and over.

He kicked at the front door with his boot. It opened and Helen emerged, eyes wide with fear.

"My God!" She gasped, reaching out to pull on Jack's forearm. "Get in… Get in!!!"

Jack fumbled Janice in his arms as he walked into the house, steadying himself as he approached the kitchen table underneath the soft light. Ben followed and Helen slammed the door, grabbed the boy and yanked him aside.

"What the hell were you thinking?" She demanded.

But Ben just stared, eyes and nose and cheeks red from crying, tracks of dried tears darkening his fair complexion. She slapped him with her open palm across the face.

"Answer me."

Ben met her eyes and said gently, "He needs a doctor."

Helen turned, saw Jack laying Janice on the bare kitchen table. Janice's chest calmly rose and fell, eyes fluttered, deeply entranced in sleep. Helen observed them all in silence and disbelief. Jack looked at the furniture and the walls, forgot himself. The kitchen door opened.

"Jack!"

At the sound of Melinda's voice, his head whipped in her direction. She walked over to him and embraced him tightly. He was safe. Her eyes closed in ecstasy, languidly reopening as she exhaled. Her breath caught, nails dug into his shoulders and he froze, tucked the hope for comfort he wanted from her away, let his pain fester a little more.

"Janice?" Melinda's voice was meek, horrified. Her hand covered her mouth in shock. Her heels echoed on the wooden floor, hollow-sounding in the silent room. She spoke her name again, standing beside her and touching her cheek. Her fingers snaked down a limp arm and entwined themselves in chilled fingers. She squeezed the hand and awaited a response. There was no change.

"She fainted," Jack said over his shoulder, his back to the kitchen table.

Ben had turned his attention to the window, "He needs a doctor."

"She needs a doctor?" The anxiety in Melinda's voice rose.

"No," Jack replied, waving his hand in dismissal, "Ben is confused. She just fainted. Take him home, Helen."

"What happened?" Helen demanded.

Jack swallowed, eyes puffy and red. He ran a hand through his hair and stared at the floor, "Braun is dead."

"What?" Helen shrieked.

"No!" Ben yelled, "He needs a doctor!"

"He was hit," Jack stammered, "It wasn't his fault, Helen. He died a hero. It was what he wanted."

Helen's expression crumbled; she hid her face in her hands. Her weeping filled the silent room, voice muffled through her fingers, "Where is he?"

"Outside. In front of the soldier's clinic."

"You just left him there?"

Jack was infuriated, "There was nothing I could do!"

Helen dropped her arms at her sides, stiffened, a disgusted expression on her face. Jack's voice quieted,

"Please take Ben home. Now."

Jack looked up at Helen. "Please," he said, "I will tell you more tomorrow."

She nodded and turned to the boy.

"C'mon, Ben," she said, taking his hand and leading him out the door, across the street to her home, to the familiar trappings of his room.

The door clicked shut. Melinda, still holding Janice's hand in her own, turned to Jack.

"How?"

"A truck hit him. Ben was in the way of the truck as it came down the street. Braun saved him. Got killed."

She paused, let the quiet blanket them as she watched Janice sleep. "What about her?"

"I don't know. We were hiding in an alley. A guard was coming and I grabbed her so we wouldn't be caught. I don't think she saw him. I covered her mouth to keep her quiet. She fought me and then nothing. She just… fainted."

"What does that mean?" Melinda said under her breath, brushing the hair from Janice's eyes.

"I don't know."

The silence lingered between them, soft sounds emanating from Janice's throat.

"Everyone is downstairs," Mel said.

"Who?"

"The Resistance boys… "

"I guess, I have to tell them too… "

She let go of Janice's hand, laying it gently on the table, running her fingertips over the soft, delicate fingers and knuckles carefully. She turned and approached Jack, put her hands on his shoulders and coaxed him to turn around. He obeyed, head hanging in defeat. She cupped his face, lifted it to look into his solemn eyes, tears collecting in her own.

"Are you okay, Jack?"

"Yeah."

Her brows furrowed, lips pursed as she suppressed a sob. Her eyes closed as she leaned her forehead on his, letting his warm breath run along her lips and beneath her nose. The tips of her fingers traced patterns in his cropped brown hair.

"I'm so sorry," she breathed, her voice wavering with emotion. She tilted her head and captured his lips in her own. He broke away and sucked in a breath as his grief surfaced; his arms clutched at her back and crushed her to him. He buried his face in her neck. They lost track of time, absorbed by the warmth of the embrace. When he pulled away and wiped at his cheeks, he met her eyes and whispered.

"I'm okay."

She nodded slightly and let go. He straightened himself, adjusted the flaps of his collar and headed through the kitchen door to the cellar.

Melinda walked back to the kitchen table, grasped Janice's cold hand again. She let the other brush the red-gold bangs from her forehead in an attempt to wake her. She called her name, rubbed her arm, her cheek, her stomach, but there was nothing. Just murmuring and insignificant noises that surfaced intermittently from her lips as though she was dreaming.

Mel took a cloth from the cupboard and ran it under the faucet, lathered it with soap. She returned to the table with it, dabbing Janice's forehead, tracing down along her temple, past her ear and down her cheeks and jaw to her throat. She cleaned the layers of mud and grime collected from burning ashes and slipping on the forest grounds. She reached her collarbone and began to remove Janice's coat, gently lifting her up to ease the heavy garment off her shoulders. Then she focused on the muddied combat boots, removing them carefully, dropping them onto the floor. Returning to Janice's upper body she hesitated, unbuttoning the top button of Janice's white cotton shirt, and then another, peeking beneath the fabric. An undershirt. She gingerly removed the shirt and then the belt, trousers and socks, running the cloth along Janice's arms, around her wound. She scrubbed her feet and calves, stopped at the knee. She blushed in spite of herself, irritated at her stubborn, diffident nature.

She tried again to wake Janice and again the silence prevailed. Melinda groaned as she lifted Janice into her arms, unsure if she had the strength to carry her to the bedroom. But she was determined, walking stiffly through the hall as Janice murmured from the movement. She deposited her gently onto the bed. Mel kicked off her own shoes and climbed beside her; ran her hand affectionately back and forth against the smooth flesh of the uninjured arm.

"What happened to you?" Melinda whispered, gazing down at her friend.

The muttering got louder. Janice tossed her head back and forth, eyes squeezed shut as she moaned incoherently, hands clenching and unclenching and then reaching up. Melinda caught her wrists, rose onto her knees and leaned over her. The sounds turned into words: _No, no! Stop! Enough! No, no, no…_

She jerked awake, startled green eyes staring out, her wrists held on each side of her head. Janice looked up and searched the woman's expression, heard her name spoken with an American accent. She sobbed. At last.

"It's okay, it's okay… " Melinda murmured, voice breaking with emotion as Janice clutched at her desperately. She returned the forceful grasp, cradling the back of her head. She held Janice to her breast protectively, resting her cheek atop red-gold hair. Janice's fingers tore at Melinda's blouse, grasped the fine material in fists. Confused, she wept into the collar of Melinda's blouse, hiding her face. Melinda kissed the top of her head, "It's okay."

As her cries subsided, Janice leaned back in the embrace, her forehead inches from Melinda's. Her eyes were frantic, her voice quiet, "Are you here to rescue me?"

Melinda stared back dumbstruck, cupped Janice's face in her hands, "Janice what are you -"

"The Americans. Our troops. Are they here? They must know I'm here. The Nazis have captured me… "

Silence as Melinda stared blankly, panic rising, breathing laboured, "Janice… don't you know who I am?"

Her bright green eyes moved across Melinda's features, absorbed the curves and structure. Janice's brows furrowed, tremors dwindling. Her fingertips reached up and caressed tear-streaked cheekbones, thumb traced the corner of Melinda's lips. "Mel?" Her voice was small.

Melinda sobbed, "Yes." She clutched at Janice's shirt. "Yes, it's me."

"Are the Nazis gone?"

"They're gone."

"No more… "

Melinda gaped at Janice's stricken face, saw a helplessness in her that she had never seen. Tears ran down her cheeks as she embraced her.

"I had a horrible nightmare," Janice continued. "We should just go home. Come with me. Back to America and we'll translate the scrolls there… take it to museums. Let's just get away from Greece and go back home."

"Janice, please, just stop… " Mel insisted, pulling away and reaching up to feel Janice's forehead. "Stop." It was hot, clammy. A fever perhaps.

Melinda instructed her to lie down and she lay with her, each staring at the other, each confused and broken. Mel's hand stayed atop a fever-warmed cheek, thumb brushing back auburn hair. Janice spoke first, eyes skittish, voice whispering,

"Is it safe?"

Melinda cleared her throat. "Yes," she said softly, "I'm with you. It's safe."

"I think so too," came the quiet reply.

She stared at her gravely, "You need to rest. I'll stay here."

Janice averted her eyes, "I don't want to dream again… "

"Dreams are all we have." Mel leaned forward, lips closing slowly over Janice's forehead. She reached down and clasped Janice's hand between her own. She ached, disoriented by her grief, consumed until she wasn't sure what it was that fed her pain. She recalled the sight of the explosives in the village square, the diversion she had to create. Destroying the Nazi offices and buildings. The fire burning and devouring; everything turned to dust, everything shattered. "Sleep. You're safe."

She watched as Janice calmed, breathing came in steady patterns. Sweat began to break out on her forehead, darkened clumps of red hair clung to the moist surface. Melinda brushed them aside. Fatigue held them both but peace overtook Janice first as she settled into sleep. Mel ran her thumb along Janice's knuckles, observed the tanned complexion of her friend, darker than she first remembered. How had that detail escaped her? Her brows furrowed. She kissed Janice's warmed hand and her eyes finally closed from exhaustion.

When she woke, Jack was standing beside the bed and nudging her shoulder. He looked worn, aged in the hours past since she last saw him. Mel gingerly rose from the bed and whispered to him.

"We need to take her back downstairs."

"Okay," he replied, "Everyone left a long time ago."

"Have you heard anything from Helen?"

"No."

She nodded, stared down at the floor and smoothed the creases in her outfit with controlling hands. Jack lifted Janice, mindful of her healing injury, and headed toward the kitchen. Melinda held open the doors as they travelled through the larder and descended the stairs to the wine cellar. She moved the shelf, unlocked the door, the ritual of the act suddenly unsettling. And as the waft of stale air hit them, Jack lay Janice down on the bed. She did not stir. Neither of them could look at her. He walked out and Melinda closed the door, the loud creaking of locking tumblers destroyed the silence. But Janice did not wake.

***

The world oozed bright light and colour, tipped sideways and then back: rocking on the moving axis as she stumbled about, fighting the distance and the vertigo. She reached the door, thinking that something was missing but not remembering what it was, and she fumbled for the tiny key. The keyhole wobbled, back and forth with the earth, skittered away from her like an insect. At last she conquered it, shoving they key successfully through. It turned and creaked, and the door groaned as it opened, groaned again as it shut. She fell when she let it go, hitting the cement floor of the tiny room. It bruised her, but she felt little of the impact as she clawed at the duvet and climbed into bed next to the warmth of a body.

Her hands travelled down, seeking the hands of another. And when she found them, she brought them to her lips, kissed them and held them there. They were beautiful hands, or so she thought them to be, attached to delicate wrists and the soft pulse of blue veins. Dainty and feminine, powerful and capable. Very beautiful, she decided, very lovely. She inhaled their fragrance: the faint-sweet aroma of perfume. They were warm, and she took comfort in them, lethargy creeping into her movements. Her eyes slipped closed.

A scream ripped from deep within the throat of the body next to her, animalistic and incomprehensible. Melinda jerked awake, searching for the creature, eyes glazed and movements slurred. The woman beside her flailed and shrieked. She lifted slowly, tried to pin her down but the motions were too quick. Wild eyes met her own and Janice leapt at her, clung to her, arms wrapping around her neck and pulling.

"Janice," Melinda croaked, "Whas thematter?"

The replies were unintelligible: Idontknowanything, Idontknowanything! I swear! I don't! Stop! Stop! Stop! It hurts! It hurts! I'll tell you anything. Anythingyouwant! Enoughenoughenough…

"Janice, please… " Melinda begged, "I don' understand."

"The doctor… "

"You need a doctor?"

"No! Keep him away from me!"

Janice wailed into the crook of Melinda's neck, scratched the back of her head and shoulder as her nails dug into the skin. Melinda held her, feeling the world tip back and forth, feeling tears creep into her eyes out of frustration. She didn't understand. Mel rubbed her back to soothe her, wanting desperately to return to the silence and the comfort of sleep, the warmth of Janice's body next to her own.

When Jack tore into the room, Janice was calming, her sobs reduced to sharp inhales of breath and soft, erratic whimpers. He stared at the two of them, running a hand through his hair, wiping the sleep from his eyes.

"What the hell happened?" He asked, walking to the foot of the bed, wanting to make eye-contact with Melinda.

She stared blankly at him, numbed. "I dunno," she slurred.

He wandered over to the bed, leaned in close to her. The scent of liquor rolled off of her instantly.

"Melinda," he said, his voice wavering with anger, "how much did you drink?"

She remained quiet and tangled her fingers in red-gold hair. Her arm went around Janice's waist and she tightened her hold. Mel gazed emptily at the floor.

Jack put a hand on his forehead, leaned back in the tiny chair beside the desk. He stared at the ceiling. His jaw moved, clenching and shifting to the side as he ground his back teeth. She was drunk again. Piss drunk. Idiotic and off-balance. It was endless. The hope he had that it was subsiding was swiftly gone. She hardly drank in the past weeks, but she was as before, drowned in alcohol, unrepentant and uncaring. Miserable.

And Janice, Jack peered over at her, was suddenly like a child. Terribly frightened of the monsters he couldn't see, the ghosts that lingered in her mind, existing there alone. He tried to understand but could not believe. She had nightmares, he knew, but nightmares would pass.

"I'm going to send for the doctor tomorrow," he said, unsure if they were listening. Silence returned to him. His anger flared again. "Melinda, get upstairs! You're making things worse."

"No doctor!" Janice shouted, trembling.

Melinda wearily pried herself away from Janice's firm grasp. Janice pulled her back and cried out,

"You can't take anything else!"

Mel tried again but Janice overpowered her. Jack threw his hands in the air and rose from his seat.

"Fine!" He spat. "I'm going to bed. Talk to me when you're sober, Melinda."

The hinges squealed and the tumblers clacked. The sound of the shelf shifting in front of the door came muffled through the thick metal.

Janice refused to relinquish her grasp and Melinda was too tired to fight her. She leaned down, taking Janice with her, to rest in bed on her side. Janice's hands wrapped around her neck, kept Melinda's lips next to the clammy forehead where strands of red hair stuck to the sticky flesh. Melinda kissed her hairline, lost in her own delirium. Sleep was coming to her. She was certain of it now. And every aching cell in her body welcomed it with delight.

***

Her eyes opened, thick with sleep and her pulse throbbed painfully through her head, pronounced at her temples. Warm breath caressed her collarbone, inviting heat incubated her, tied her down to the soft mattress. Strands of hair tickled beneath her nose and her vision focused. Janice lay entwined with her, sleeping peacefully with her hands cupping the back of Melinda's neck. In the night her undershirt rose above her navel, her legs, tan-brown and muscular, were exposed. Mel froze, bewildered by the intimate position. She had to get away.

Melinda removed herself carefully, adjusting their positions and stopped halfway. Janice's eyes were open. Her lips parted, breath coming in gasps as she struggled to explain herself, remembering little of the previous night. She focused on Janice's gaze and realised her eyes were vacant, blurry. There was an unnatural quality to them: a drowning look. The look of the dead. Mel propped her up in her arms.

"Janice?" There was no response. Melinda panicked, in her hysteria searched for a pulse. Still alive. She spoke again, "Janice, what's the matter?" But there was nothing. A blank look and than a flicker of her green eyes, adjusted to stare directly into Melinda's own.

"Speak to me." Silence. "Please."

Her eyes moved again, staring with unchanged emptiness over Melinda's shoulder. Melinda watched her swallow, the muscles moving exaggerated at her throat, the sound of it faintly carried into the air. She waited patiently, tasted the residual flavour of hard liquor on her tongue. The headache pulsed with renewed vigour. She covered her eyes. It was probably late. She wondered if business was slow, if the events of the night before kept people away. She hoped it was true.

Something was horribly wrong. Janice needed help. She rose quickly, turned toward the door to send for Jack. As she stepped forward, she felt pressure around her wrist and was yanked back. She spun around, saw Janice staring intently at her. Her wrist was suspended in the air, squeezed in Janice's hand.

Melinda exhaled a breath, startled, "I'm going to come right back." She saw her lost expression. Profound fear, fraught with uncertainty. Torment. Mel approached her, cupped her face in her hands, "I promise."

Janice hesitated and then leaned back onto the bed, staring up at the ceiling, thoughts swirling inside of her mind. The tears collected in Melinda's eyes. She was frustrated, worried. Something was wrong. She unlocked the door and moved the shelf, covered the entrance as she left. Toiling to keep herself contained, she bounded up the steps, searching for Jack or Helen, anyone. She needed a doctor.

Janice sat up in bed, eyes wandered from the ceiling to the desk chair. Her eyes widened, fixated on the desk. She covered her mouth in shock and sank back down onto the mattress. He sat plainly, hands folded in his lap, bubbling grey curls, thick black spectacles. Staring at her, motionless and silent. His hands were slicked with fresh blood. His throat was slashed and gaping, eyes bulging in panic. His chest moved in and out. A loud wheezing sound choked through the flaps in his throat. The Nazi doctor, just as she left him. White lab coat and grey clothing beneath, body pale and drained of blood. He peered at her from the chair. A desperate face, mouth open in the shape of an 'o', air sucked in and trembled feebly back out.

_Go away!_

She covered her face, peeked at him between her fingers and then squeezed her eyes shut.

_Go away!_

***

"Whatever you do, don't speak English," she said, "You have to promise me you won't."

She nodded, lying on the bed in Melinda and Jack's bedroom. Janice watched Melinda disappear down the hall and turned back to stare at the ceiling, pleased to be away from the dingy cellar room. But she loathed being alone, hated the lack of company and occupation. Left alone with her thoughts, it was always the same: visions of death and war and laboratories, the French pilot burned to death, the Nazi with the holes in his face, the doctor smiling and choking on his own vomit, the young man she shot, the cold metal slab and the dull, empty ache on her side. All of the pain, she remembered, until she passed out on the slab with the stoic guard above her. Just business, was it? Just business. They cut her open, but it was just a symptom. War was the stage and all the men were players. She was on the wrong side, of course, the losing side, that's all! They were enemies and so it had to be. Just business. Human Nature, the rotten, bastard child of Mother Earth.

All three marched into the room: Melinda carrying long strips of gauze and a pile of clothing as Jack and Helen followed behind. Melinda put the gauze and clothes beside Janice's head, sat beside her on the mattress. Jack and Helen spoke next to the doorway away from them.

"Why a man?" Jack asked, turning a square fold of paper in his hands.

"Orders from the Americans," Helen replied, "That same French contact that sent you the distress signal."

"They've contacted you?" Jack said, frowning.

"No. The man inside, what was his name… Becker, right?"

"He told you?"

"Yes. Last night, he said he got a message from them on the radio."

Jack paused, "So why a man?"

"If she's to finish her business here… " Helen became quiet, eyeing the body on the bed, "and I don't know now if she will, but the Nazis won't accept a female guard posted at the mines. They would see through her in an instant."

Jack shook his head, examining the forged documents beneath his fingertips, "It always has to be complicated… "

Melinda placed two fingers beneath Janice's chin, forced her to make eye-contact. Mel was blushing and her voice was quiet. She squeezed the gauze in her hand absentmindedly, "Janice." She ran her tongue along her bottom lip, her eyes were skittish. "There's a man who's coming to make sure you're okay. But he thinks you're a man." She flushed deeper red. "I, um… I have to… bind you." She reached for the gauze and placed it beside Janice's arm. Janice stared blankly. "Unless you'd like to do it?" Melinda asked. Her voice sounded hopeful. Janice did not respond. Mel sighed and nodded.

Her slender fingertips snaked toward the hem of the white undershirt, her eyes darted from the movement of her hands to the blue-green eyes that gave her permission. There was no distress in them, even as the cotton fabric of her undershirt lifted and exposed her. Melinda repositioned her back, attempted to shield Janice's body from Jack and Helen. She took the gauze and began to wrap it around Janice's chest, flattening her breasts. She spoke to Helen and Jack to distract herself.

"So," she began, "Are you positive he won't want to examine her bandages?"

"Not if he doesn't see them," Helen replied, "Put the undershirt over that and then the shirt and hopefully it will be thick enough. He shouldn't notice."

"Hopefully?" Mel asked, a hint of shock in her voice.

"I don't have any better ideas," she replied.

"Nor I," Jack chimed, scrutinizing the papers, "Think this photo will pass? It could be anyone. It's so faded."

"_He_ damaged it in the war, right?"

Jack nodded vigorously, "Right."

Melinda completed her task, leaned in toward Janice, "Too tight?"

She shook her head. Mel fished into the pile of clothing and recovered a pouch filled with antiseptic vials and medicines. Janice stared at it curiously. Melinda smiled as she gingerly moved Janice's injured arm.

"I have all this gauze," she murmured, "I might as well."

"Helen, he'll be here soon," Jack said from the doorway, "Thanks for picking up the clothes."

"No problem," she replied, "She's the same size as Ben, so it was easy to get from the tailor."

"Shall I go get the doctor now?" She asked softly.

"Yeah," Jack replied, "Melinda's almost finished."

She placed her hand on his shoulder before turning and heading down the hall to the café. Jack closed the door and walked over to the bed, helped Melinda with Janice's new uniform.

"Still not talking?" He asked, unsure of whom to address the question.

"No," Mel replied, buttoning Janice's shirt and tucking it into her trousers.

He looked down at the vials of medication and hid them in the desk. "Well," he said solemnly, "I suppose, today, that's a good thing."

A short time later, a soft knock rumbled through the door. Jack got up and opened it. A stout man with small spectacles and a head full of ruffled black and grey hair wobbled into the room. He wore fine clothing, a dark three piece suit and a black tie, expensive shoes that were polished to shine. His greying moustache was trimmed and impeccable. His black bag bounced on the side of his knee as he walked, and when he reached the bed, Melinda rose and stepped back from it.

"So this is your nephew, Jack?"

Jack swallowed. "Yes."

"How long was he fighting?" The doctor asked casually, holding out his hand toward Jack.

"Three years on the Russian front." Jack placed the documentation in the open palm and the doctor adjusted his spectacles as he read it, blinked, held it further away, and adjusted his spectacles again. Jack's hands shook, "He damaged it. We're going to get it replaced."

The doctor handed the papers back, his rough voice rumbled, "If that is all that was damaged by those Soviet pigs, the boy should consider himself lucky." The doctor paused, staring at Janice. "What seems to be the problem, Christofer?"

Silence. Jack and Melinda stared at each other, wincing. The doctor seemed unimpressed. "He's mute?"

"Only since he came back," Melinda replied, hands fumbling with the hem of her shirt.

"The boys that come back from the Russian front do strange things sometimes… " The doctor's voice trailed off as he leaned closer to Janice's face, scrutinized the unusually feminine characteristics. "How old is he?"

"Seventeen, doctor," Melinda said.

"Seventeen, eh? Awfully young… "

"He was very passionate about serving the Fuhrer," Jack added.

"Indeed," the doctor replied, opening his black bag on the nightstand, "And broke the law just to do it."

Jack swallowed, Melinda shifted her weight from one foot to the next, crossed her arms over her chest. The doctor shone a light into Janice's eyes, watched for movement, made low sounds in his throat as he made little discoveries and compiled the observations in his mind. He undid the top buttons of Janice's shirt and Melinda felt her pulse hammer inside her chest. She gripped Jack's forearm and bit her lip. Jack ran his hand through his hair and swallowed nervously. The doctor merely sat on the bed and placed the cold metal end of the stethoscope beneath the fabric, listening intently, looking distant at furniture and inanimate objects.

"This boy seems very odd," he said, rising and putting his stethoscope away, "Underdeveloped."

The doctor nodded, staring at Janice's face, interest lingering on her tanned complexion. "Too much sun," he said, walking around to the other side of the bed. "Yes." He nodded his head. "Too much sun." He looked at her eyes, clear and bright green. "The boy appears to have good fitness, or at least the makings of good genes but his blood has been poisoned. I think it is the sun. As for the lack of speech… " The doctor looked up and regarded Jack and Melinda as he sealed his bag and straightened his tie, "He suffers from an unusual level of melancholy. But that can be easily fixed. I myself feel unusually quiet at times -pensive, that is. A man has a lot on his mind. I recommend he rests with no human contact. It will only excite him and aggravate his condition. When he begins to talk again, he should be taken out when there is no sun. To the cinema, perhaps. He should also be witness to ordinary things, like children playing outside. It will calm him, get his mind away from war and back at home."

Jack approached the doctor and shook his hand, "Thank you."

"It is only my duty," he replied, "Good day, sir," and then to Melinda, "Madam."

Jack escorted the doctor back to the café, Melinda closed the door after them and went to Janice's bedside. She leaned close to Janice and placed her hand over Janice's stomach, searched for the gauze beneath the fabric with her fingertips.

"It hurts." Melinda said, reading the look on her face.

Janice nodded.

"Okay. Let's get it off." Melinda unbuttoned the cotton shirt and gently removed it, followed with the undershirt. She bit her lip as she removed the gauze, noticed the slight redness that formed from the constricting bind. "Sorry," she said sheepishly, and she watched as Janice took a deep breath, chest freely expanding.

"Think you can walk with me back down to the room?"

A nod. Melinda half-smiled.

"Will you stay with me?" Janice rasped.

Mel gazed at her, surprised and relieved by the sound of her voice.

Janice continued, "I don't dream when you're with me."

Melinda pursed her lips and let a hand glide through the cropped hair at Janice's forehead. "Of course," she replied, "I promised."

***

The air was fresh and warm, the crest of summer on the horizon. The aroma of potato pancakes travelled from the café into the streets, patrons enjoying them on the tiny patio at the entrance. _Kartoffelpuffers. _That was the name.Was it Jack who taught it to her? She shrugged, sauntered through the courtyard as the sun beamed onto the thick fabric of her uniform. It was against the doctor's orders to be in the sun. She was getting too dark, Jack told her. Too much sun. The nagging aggravated her, though in private, she thought he was right.

A breeze flitted through the lengthening strands of her hair. Her eyes scanned the streets, cobblestone and serpentine, bright with rays. The speakers in the square blared the recorded words of the Fuhrer, then Joseph Goebbels: _Nun, volk, steh auf und sturm brich los! Deutschland über alles! _It played over and over and finally cut to music, the fifth replay of _Die Wacht Am Rhein _that morning.She began to sing it, the tune engrained in her from habit, the lyrics following. It was all merely reflex. She turned down another street; German children played games, hearty and fair-skinned. Peasants and soldiers ate confectionaries on terraces. Pastries and coffee, sweetness with the tickling scent of spices. And so it was, May fifth, 1944, that a year had passed with such immediate haste and indifference to them: the people caught drowning in the ebbing tide of time.

She would have to get back to the café. Melinda troubled over her if she wasn't punctual. She chuckled at the thought. Mel never heeded the doctors, stayed close whenever Janice requested. She knew it hurt them: Melinda and Jack. Jack couldn't understand her though he tried. He could not see human nature like Janice could. Mel too, was oblivious to it: the things that Janice could see, but Melinda never denied her, never sought to explain her.

_What if the war never ends and we're trapped here? And we can't go back to how we used to be… In Gottvertrau'n greif' zu dem Schwert! Und tilg' die Schmach mit Feindesblut! _Repeat, repeat. _Yes_, she thought, _dear Melinda, what if we are trapped here… I think you know the answer. You are no longer Melinda Pappas, and I am not Janice Covington. _Never again._ Christofer Gottlieb, the papers say: a man, a soldier, a German, a Nazi. _Gottlieb, Christofer._ Deutschland über alles!_

She ascended the steps to the house, used the key Jack gave her to open the door. She could never go through the café entrance; everyone was watching. The soldiers were already talking about the young boy from the Russian front. Too much attention, though the Nazi Becker, friend to the Resistance, had drinks with her in view of the public. It was known about the town that she was Jack's nephew recovering from injuries. The neighbourhood women, the wide-hipped mothers with podgy faces and reddened cheeks flustered themselves with gossip: _Jack's boy is daft! Quite senseless and empty. Oh, but he is a little handsome, yes, his eyes, his face, but that alone! It must be the genes. And you know Jack, with those dark, foreign eyes of his. So it's in the family. The boy must get his dark skin, his shortness, certainly his idiocy from those bad genes. And they say now, that the younger one barely breathes a word, going mad just the same…_

Janice closed the door behind her, inhaled the scent of cooking broth emanating through the house from the café stovetops. The air was hot from used ovens and baking. She shrugged off her jacket, unbuttoned her shirt and placed them both across the backs of the wooden chairs in the kitchen. She stretched her arms, felt the cotton undershirt strain, ran her fingertips across her skin and the scar beside her left bicep. Helen stitched it well. She stared at the table, remembering the pain and the confusion of the world she'd stumbled into. She had been relieved to see Jack, thankful to be alive and away from the prison cells that smelled of rot and urine. And the Nazi doctor.

She cringed. _Doctors, doctors, doctors: _the gramophone of thoughts. The program that played revolution after revolution: _scratch, scratch, scratch!_ She traced the larger scar on her pelvis, brutally twisted and curved. And what was it that was really gone? A little piece? An organ -_what?_ She didn't know. She never wanted to know. Preoccupied with constant malaise, she knew only that she was still alive, that the days were long and wearing.

With luck, she had escaped infection and Melinda tended the stitching well, monitoring it, dabbing it with medicine obtained from the town physician. Janice knew he gave it to her. She would never allow him to administer it; never let him close to her stitches with any instruments or vials of liquid. And she knew Melinda hated him. It satisfied her, calmed her when he came over to inspect her condition, give advice, test her mind.

The rules were made plain: she had to improve. The doctor warned her and scolded Melinda for encouraging her deviance. Improvement was necessary, he would declare, and then proceeded to list the consequences: the failure as a man -a German man, and as a Nazi, the betrayal to the Fuhrer and to country. She would be sent away to a clinic if there was no progress. Melinda was infuriated. She decided she was going to cure her. It consumed her, became a new habit. And Mel slowly forgot the drink, working between shifts at the café to coach Janice to walk about, to speak and act normally.

It was, Mel told her, just an act. She recognised the insincerity of Janice's attempts, the abnormal half-heartedness for routine activities. Talking was most difficult but Melinda would drag it out of her. Talk to this person, to that person, and talk when spoken to. They expect it. A performance of necessity. Janice stared with eyes glazed around the quaint kitchen, remembering Melinda's anguished plea as she sat in one of the chairs:

"Just pretend," she said, "Please. Please, Janice, pretend!" She paced. "It doesn't have to be real or true, and when they're gone, you may do as you please. I promise, I promise. Whatever you want! Just act it for me. Or they'll take you… " she knelt on the floor in front of her, took her hands and enfolded them in her own, "You'll vanish. People just disappear. And no one knows where they go... I -_you_ would never see me again… "

Silence as she stared up at Janice. Her lips pursed and emerged blood-red, "Is that what you want?"

Janice shook her head.

Slender, alabaster fingers reached up and cupped her face; desperate eyes searched hers, "Then speak. The man is coming to see you."

It was always the _man, _never the doctor, so as not to excite her, Jack would say. It irritated her when he talked like that, like the doctor -what was his name? Dr. Blank. Yes. With his doughy face and combed moustache hair and perfect suit. Dr. Blank who said she was too dark, too stupid, too underdeveloped for a boy. _Idiot_.

Janice picked up her jacket and shirt and headed down the hallway to the bedroom, dropping her clothing on the clean duvet. Melinda was in the café with Jack and Helen and Ben. She was alone, isolated by the quiet with the homunculus that lived in her head, kicking about the soft meat of her brain, spurning thought and agony. _Progress_. The homunculus knew nothing of it. It lingered in the past, suffocated her with it, made her stare off at the walls when someone talked to her, made her head hurt, made her collapse in public. But she had to improve. Act, behave. Distraction was helpful. She stripped off her clothes and threw them on the bed, heading into the shower.

_Objects_. The homunculus recognised the familiar ones. Jack and Melinda's bed, her bed in the basement, the kitchen table, each with its own powerful significance. The kitchen was the training ground, the rehearsal stage: walk properly, speak well, look healthy, arm your weapons and go! Over the top, boys! Don't get shot!

Down the hall, to the bedroom, was the church, the bed and the altar. It was where she lay when her condition was extreme, when no one knew why, when nothing of her silence was understood. She had the stitches and the marks but never talked about them, refused to give life to them or to think of them freely. So she stared blankly at the ceiling and everyone around her panicked, laid her on the bed and surrounded her. Faces peered over her, Jack and Helen, Melinda and Ben. And Jack and Ben wore hats, speaking words that she didn't understand from a book opened over her. Melinda and Helen wore shawls, and repeated the words into the air, heads bowed.

Mel explained it to her much later, after Janice began to talk again. It was a prayer, a Jewish prayer for the sick. Jack insisted on it, uncovering with thorough care a Torah from beneath the floorboards, unbinding it from the other forbidden mementos of their past lives: American passports, credit cards, bank notes, birth certificates, _yarmulkes_, Melinda's Christian bible. They dimmed the lights around her, lighting candles so Jack could read from the Torah and they prayed:

_May the One who blessed our ancestors -_

_Patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,_

_Matriarchs Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, and Leah -_

_Bless and heal: Janice Covington…_

And the ritual repeated, night after night that she did not speak, the few words she uttered to Melinda kept secret. _Progress._ If the doctor could not move her forward, then perhaps God could, Jack reasoned. God was the answer to the failure of men. Janice remembered hearing them over her, their voices low and harmonious, calming her until she slept.

_HaKadosh Barukh Hu_

_yimalei rahamim aleha,_

_l'hahlimah,_

_u-l'rap'otah,_

_l'hazikah,_

_u-l'hay-otah…_

Janice turned the showerhead on. The warm water of the shower crackled against the porcelain tub, hitting her skin with force. Her eyes closed and she felt the water invade her ears, rolling down her head, shoulders and back. The shower held memories too. She scrubbed her flesh raw, feeling unclean: the dirty thickness of guilt. Melinda and Jack fought once; she heard them through the hollow sound of heavy water drops:

"We can't keep doing this, Melinda," Jack said, "We're putting everyone at risk."

A pause.

"The Resistance," he continued, "Ben, you, me!"

"She needs our help, Jack!" Melinda's voice was unusually shrill.

"At what expense? Her employer is demanding she continue with the next phase of her contract… "

"She's in no condition to go anywhere."

"They won't wait forever!"

Mel's voice became quiet, "How can you defend them? Haven't you seen the marks on her? Do you remember where you found her?"

"Yes. But when I agreed to help her, I agreed to put my _own_ life on the line and no one else's. Now everyone is jeopardized. I never agreed to endanger _you_ and I won't participate in anything that deliberately puts you in harm's way -"

"I chose to participate, Jack," Mel interrupted, "I've decided to protect her. She's my friend… our ally… why is this so difficult for you?"

"I don't understand it! Her behaviour, her distance… _That_ is not the woman I met in Greece… "

"I don't understand it either, but I won't abandon her here."

"And every night you're with her… for nightmares, I know. But she's not a child!"

"We don't know what she saw… what they did to her… she was tortured. How can anyone begin to live after that?"

"I don't know!" His voice rumbled furiously through the walls. "I never know anything anymore!" And more quietly, "Why the hell did all of this happen?"

The tension swelled in the silence, growing insufferable until Jack spoke again in a lowered voice,

"You can't keep her here… or else… "

"Or else, what?" Melinda's voice was hurt, defiant.

"She can't stay here forever. Not the way she is."

"Jack -"

"I'm serious, she can't -"

"If you force me to choose between the two of you, I will _never_ forgive you for it."

Janice had waited next to the door, listening, the shower still running, water trickling down her cold flesh. She heard movement, the mattress creaking and footsteps growing fainter. Jack spoke again.

"I don't want to make you chose… but she _has_ to get better."

More footsteps.

"Don't disappoint me, Melinda."

And the silence returned, unremitting.

Janice shook the memory from her consciousness, closed the faucet and wrapped her body in a towel. She stared at her golden complexion in the mirror, her pale colourless lips in the glass, her bright green eyes haloed by an unruly red mane. Too dark. Yes, she was too dark. But her eyes stood out from her tanned skin and it made her look exotic. Mediterranean perhaps. No, no, it was quite ugly. She longed to reverse the days she spent in the sun on archaeological digs, travelling through the Middle East. It meant nothing to her now, and she was left with the permanent mark of the sunlight, the punishment of bronze residue on her skin that would not wash away.

She opened the bathroom door and steam whirled around her. She reached for her clothing on the bed, eyed the duvet and the homunculus began to kick about again. Digging, digging, looking for relics that she would inevitably bury: learn to forget. But while she could still remember, it teased her, provoked her with recollection against her will. And time moved backward, behind her eyes as she remembered Melinda in the darkened bedroom. It smelled of incense. There had been a prayer. A figure moved behind Melinda, walking through the door, middle-aged and medium height with peasant clothes and the scent of tobacco.

A briefcase bounced against his knee as he walked, a stethoscope peeking out of the collar of his tunic. A doctor. She cringed and curled up on the bed, knees beneath her chin. He sat beside her and Melinda came near, reached a hand out to her shoulder. The man had a full head of brown hair, gold-rimmed spectacles and a large nose. His face was long and carbuncular and there were crows-feet at his dark eyes. He looked at her meekly, kept his hands folded in his lap.

"Hello, Janice."

She turned to Melinda with uncertainty and Mel sat on the bed, rubbed the chorded muscles at the back of Janice's neck to calm her.

"This is a friend," she whispered, "He came to visit Jack."

Janice narrowed her eyes. Melinda's ears flushed when she lied.

"He wants to make sure you're alright," she continued, "He knows who we are and who you really are."

Janice wanted to laugh. _Who am I, then, really? Please tell me, Doc, tell me, tell me_… but she merely nodded.

"Okay," Mel said, grimacing, "You're going to have to let him look at you… you have to remove your clothing." She caressed Janice's cheek, "I'm going to be right here."

Mel grabbed a blanket from the closet and kept it next to Janice as she helped her out of her clothing. As Janice began to panic, she cloaked the blanket over her bare shoulders, shielding her from the doctor's eyes. Nude beneath the cover, Janice clutched the woolen fabric in a fist, stared at the floor and felt Melinda's hands rubbing her upper arms. "Whenever you're ready," Mel said.

Janice turned and listened to the doctor talk, shrugged off the blanket at his instructions. Melinda's warm hand on her back gave her comfort, never breaking contact, never leaving.

"Her body is healthy," he said to Melinda, after the examination. She stroked Janice's spine through the cover of the blanket. Janice stared at the patterns on the duvet.

"But her mind… "

"What do we do?" Melinda's voice was raw, exhausted.

"I'm not sure," he said, "I have never encountered such a condition myself. And I'm not an expert on the brain… no one is. All I can offer is advice, Miss Papas, and I believe you should remain vigilant. I think this abandonment of speech may be the mind's rejection of trauma, perhaps of the war. This silence brings control… control brings order. I cannot tell you what, specifically, it is that makes your friend so quiet, but… it seems to me that she would try leave this world altogether."

Mel's eyes widened as she deciphered his meaning, and she looked anxiously toward Janice. "Oh no," she whispered, "She wouldn't do that."

The doctor nodded, "Perhaps you're right. You know her better than I." He wrapped his tools and medicine vials in a felt cloth and tucked them away in the briefcase before he exited the bedroom, joining Jack and Helen in the kitchen. Melinda remained, fingers curling red strands of hair behind Janice's ear, voice whimpering and breaking with emotion.

"You _wouldn't_ do that, would you?" She cupped Janice's face in her hands, staring into blank green eyes. "Tell me you wouldn't do that." Silence. "Tell me." Janice was expressionless. Melinda's chest heaved with stifled sobs and finally words, pitched high, began to die in her throat, "You wouldn't… "

Her arms closed around Janice, clutching her tightly. "What has happened to you?" She buried her face into Janice's shoulder and cried.

Janice walked out of the bedroom, dressed in uniform, feeling the warm air turned cool on her neck moist with the wetness of her hair. It had grown to the end of her ears, a deeper red in the summer season. She sighed, travelling through the kitchen to the larder, heading toward the cellar. A year! A year of everything and nothing at all. She had just begun to feel again, to talk as the spring weather warmed. The chill of the winter was gone and she realised she hardly felt it while it was there. She seldom felt anything. The seasons passed without significance and her silence suffused the world. She used to scream in her sleep, Melinda told her, but she could only remember awakening in Melinda's arms disoriented.

What it was that made her cry out at night was a mystery, objects and realities replaced with feelings of dread, sudden moments that unnerved her until she could not withhold her fury. The screams would rip through her, wake Melinda, make Janice tremble and forget everything. For months it was the same. And she hated it, loathed to watch Melinda suffer with her, to see her disintegrate as Jack aged from worry.

But one day, in the spring, as Melinda walked with her through the square, arm linked around her own, she felt the warmth in the air. It was strange at first, wholly foreign to her and she stopped walking, struck by the sensation. Mel halted and stared at her, worried that they were suddenly in danger. She watched as Janice tilted her head, listening. Birds singing. Odd. Forgotten. Janice craned her neck to hear them, inhaled the scent of grass and vegetation struggling for life after winter thaw. Life continued despite the war. Life returned. The sun was upon her, the heat permeating her pores. One did not forget completely. Her brows furrowed in concentration, Melinda's eyes stared anxious and searching. Janice let her hand travel down Melinda's forearm; she gazed at their entangling fingers. The beginnings of a smile formed on her lips and Melinda's face softened, became unreadable. Janice grinned beneath the shadowed brim of her SS cap. _Beauty_… how had she overlooked it? They walked down the street with their fingers entwined, laughing to themselves.

Down the steps, descending, her feet drummed on the wood. The cold in the wine cellar was immediate. It made her flesh react, rising tiny bumps along her arms. She removed the shelving to her room, unlocked the door and went in. As she looked toward the bed, her mind drifted again, homunculus tempering about inside. She despised it, fantasized about flicking it from her head with Jack's shaving razor. It would be so simple, at her forehead, between her eyes. She knew exactly where the homunculus lived, imagined flinging it into the sink, gouging it from its place of rest. But that would be ugly. It was not proper, a thought unbecoming for all forms of life…

Lying down on the bed, she caught the aroma of Melinda's perfume: fresh sweetness and the floral scent of hers that, so often worn, had become engrained in her skin and hair. It was embedded into the pillows and the sheets. Janice put her head on the pillow, inhaled deeply. The homunculus in her brain turned and twisted, and she could hear Melinda's voice in her mind as though she was nearby:

"You had another dream. It's over now. I'm here."

Janice pulled her face away from Melinda's neck, met her gaze with tears trickling down her cheeks. It was over. The world behind her eyes a mirage. Her chest heaved erratically. The fear was gone for now. Gentle fingertips massaged the back of her neck. Home again.

Janice adjusted her position, moving them both down onto the bed, facing one another. Mel brushed the hair from Janice's eyes, reached out and caressed her flushed cheek. Melinda's hand dropped down to her shoulder and squeezed it gently, her thumb rubbed back and forth against the bone. She was lost in thought, staring at her moving thumb.

"What is it that you dream?" She said absently, her eyes hooded with fatigue. She glanced up at Janice and back down again as she continued, "I don't expect you to answer that."

Janice remained still, a curious expression surfaced.

"I don't dream much," Melinda said, "Not now anyway… I did have a bit of a dream a few nights ago. But it was short and very strange. Not a bad one… just peculiar."

Janice folded her hands against the pillow and placed them beneath her cheek, staring as Melinda lost herself in private thoughts. She sighed, removing her hand from Janice's neck.

"It was about Greece… " she began, "Shortly after you and I met… that is, on the night of the day that you and I met… "

The beginnings of a smile tugged at Janice's lips, and Melinda, fumbling sleepily through the start of the tale, lightly giggled. "I remembered us that night, driving away in the jeep and then I saw moments of daylight. It's very fuzzy, the whole thing: this dream. And I felt very dizzy in it. Very sick. I was lying down in bed and everything was white and grey. Sterile almost. There was someone passing by a window next to me, a nurse I think. It's very odd, this world. And that smell from the crypt in Greece… "

The tranquility in her green eyes faded and Janice focused on the fibres in the bed sheets, running her calloused fingertips over them.

"You remember that, don't you? It smelled disgusting. See? It makes no sense… And then, I dreamt of my hotel room, the one with the balcony and the small kitchen, and the door that lead to your room… "

Janice turned over, faced away from her.

"Janice?"

Her voice was hoarse from lack of use, "It wasn't a dream."

Melinda rose slightly from the mattress, leaned closer to see her face. "What?"

"Not a dream."

Mel absorbed the words.

"What do you mean?"

Janice drew a deep breath, sighing, "That's a memory."

Melinda's brows furrowed, disbelief intoned in her voice, "I don't understand -"

"You were in the hospital. I don't remember being pulled out of the crypt myself, but out of all of us: me, you, Jack, and Smythe's team, you inhaled the most. That was one of the traps inside the crypt: sulphur vapours. We were all out cold by the end of it, but you breathed the most sulphur. You were bedridden for about a week. I walked back and forth in front of your room window… they let me see you during their visiting hours but not anytime before or after. So I waited until you woke up -"

"Wait!" Melinda said, sitting up on the mattress. "Janice, what are you talking about?" She put her hand on Janice's shoulder and coaxed her to turn. Janice moved to lie on her back and stared up at Melinda.

"Sulphur vapours," she said simply, "They make you hallucinate."

Creases appeared stark on Melinda's forehead as her expression changed to one of disbelief. Her voice became hushed, "Hallucinations… "

Janice nodded, her melodic tone carrying gently to Melinda's ears, broken by harshness from deep in her throat, "Yeah. The things we saw down there. The sarcophagus with that man in it. Ares, the god of war. All that… _fantastic_ magic." She ran her tongue over her bottom lip, "It was all a lie."

"I don't… I can't believe that, Janice. That's not possible. I -" She whispered, "I felt a connection to him. I can't describe it but I know he was there."

"Melinda."

"He talked to me!"

Janice stared at the ceiling.

"I remember so clearly what he said. I fought with him. I felt him near me."

"I know you think you did -"

"I did!"

Melinda angrily turned to face away from her, lying down on the bed. She glanced over her shoulder, huffed in defiance, "How do you explain the fact that we _all_ saw the same thing?"

"I don't know what you saw."

"You saw Ares like I did."

"Yes."

"Well then!"

"We spoke to each other. Fed each other's fantasies until they got more and more incredible."

"I don't believe you."

"I know."

Janice traced circles with her index finger into the cotton fabric of the pillow case, tried to clear her mind of thoughts. Melinda spoke.

"If that was true, then Jack would also know about it."

Janice nodded.

"If I asked him… he'd tell me the same story you just told me?"

She nodded again.

"What about Smythe? I saw Ares impale him on a sword."

"That's how I know I'm right," Janice said softly, still turned away from her.

Melinda felt her indignation flare up again, "And how's that?"

She was slow to respond, the sound of her breathing filled the air. "Because he's my employer."

Melinda shook her head slightly, unable to process what she heard. She reached out for Janice, feeling her flinch as her hands made contact with her shoulder. She murmured to herself. "Did we find the scrolls?"

She shrugged the hand off of her shoulder as though it was an insect, "Goodnight, Melinda."

Janice willed herself to be silent again that night, thrusting the pillow at her face whenever she was tempted to weep. The soft noises she heard haunted her for the rest of the night, rousing her from sleep each time she drifted into the peaceful haze of rest.

Lying on the bed in the same position, Janice recovered from her memories. The homunculus was finally quiet, drowning in the tears that trickled from her eyes. She swiped at them. She breathed a sigh of relief turning to look at the empty space beside her, gazed at the cream-white pillow. The void was somehow more pronounced. She wished Melinda was there.

The sound of the lively café blared in a rising crescendo through her ears. She was oblivious to it before; now she could hear everything above her: the music, the clinking of dishes, the voices, the shouts, the stomping over the floorboards. All happy and drunk and dizzy. There, cravings found satisfaction one after another: feeding, dancing, drinking. She heard the women laughing, the soldiers singing. And up the stairs, they would run to the bedrooms, the bargirls and the Nazis: fucking in the hallways and the vacant rooms. Did Melinda have to do that?

She tossed to the left and cringed, retreating to the other side of the bed. A corpse with a butchered face, holes struck through the eyes and forehead, throat slashed. The prison guard. His jaw hung from his upper lip, mouth agape in an awkward grin. His eyes were small and beady, staring out, not quite at her.

"Go away," she demanded, her voice trembling.

His head turned to her, on the rotting, fleshy neck. Eyeballs moved to look at her for a moment, and then he turned to gaze beyond her, fixed at a point on the wall.

She covered her ears, squeezed her eyes shut. The homunculus awakened, stirred by the chaos. If she screamed, she would be in trouble. They would all be shot against the café wall outside. She couldn't scream. In a few hours, Melinda would come through the door, into the room and it would be calm again. Melinda would be with her soon.

***

_- You there, boy! Komm her zu mir._

The General. His teeth gleamed large and yellow in the gloomy light. His face erupted in a doughy, grinning mass, rapture slathered over his round, melting cheeks and mouth. He sat with his stubby legs apart, gut overflowing from the edge of his tight, leather belt, the buttons of his jacket barely held together. He was wearing his cap inside the café, too proud to remove it. It was kept straight, perfect and clean, the black rim shinning. His inflamed, heavy arms gestured toward him again. His smile became more menacing, _Komm her zu mir, Ben._

Ben approached the table cautiously, eyes travelling from the stout general to the thinner, younger officers smoking cigarettes and whispering. He looked at the Jewish traitor, the rat who consorted with them, eyes narrowing on the tiny spectacles and curly brown beard. Full of joy, full of intensity. Ben clenched his jaw.

"How old are you now?" The General asked.

Ben swallowed, "Sixteen, Herr General."

"A fine age," the fat man chuckled, tremulous convulsions consumed his burly frame, lumpy cheeks jiggled. The General's company eyed Ben with severity, murderous desire manifest in their faces. He continued:

"You do love Germany, _don't you?_"

"Yes, Herr General."

"Then, too, you must love the Fuhrer. He has done wonderful things with this country, has he not? And defeated so many of our enemies! The Jews are the biggest problem, of course, they drained us of our vitality, but so too did the Americans!"

Melinda heard the General's words and disappeared behind the kitchen door. Jack emerged from the doorway and eavesdropped from the bar counter, scrubbing a clean mug with a rag.

"Yes! Hitler has made the Motherland rich again," the General said, "The Americans -the Allies would have us all living in the most detestable squalor. Do you remember? Oh, but you were a little thing. What were you then? Five? Maybe six? You don't remember… "

But Ben did remember. He recalled playing in the court as his father lumbered home, a wheelbarrow full of marks for two weeks of work. He would help him carry the piles of money inside and dump them onto the kitchen table, watched his father sit and stare at them with blood-shot eyes. Every crumpled bill was worthless. His mother would curse his father, toiling over the meagre scraps of food for dinner. And his little brother and sister, the twins, would come bounding into the kitchen, finding the pile of cash and squealing. They thought it was a game.

His little brother would collect the marks and stack them finely, the tiny, three-year-old brain somehow obsessed with order and neatness. And his sister, with a wicked grin on her face, would wait until the stacks were precise until she knocked them down and threw them into the air, watching the paper flutter whimsically to the ground. His little brother would cry and his father would storm from the house, while his mother swatted his sister across the bottom with a wooden spoon.

Then at night, he remembered the shouts: his mother crying, his father screaming. A growl, a sob and his father roaring: _Benjamin!_ He covered his face with the sheets. His brother and sister would wail, startled by the noises. He knew he had to obey, and hesitantly rose from bed, hair tousled from sleep, padding into the kitchen. Then his father would strike him. Sometimes outright, sometimes with warning, but he was certain to bleed like his mother. And then back to bed.

"They said it was a peace treaty… " He remembered his father saying one night. "It's a death sentence. Those goddamn Americans and the British and the French! The Soviets too." He would stand at the table, making swooping gestures with his arms. "We won't lie here to rot forever! Germany will rise again." Then he would turn to Ben, "One day, when you're a man, Germany will come to ask you for your help. To ask you to take back her dignity. And you _will_ go to her."

His mother would try to intervene and his father would push her away, slap her sometimes. He continued, "You see your little brother and sister? You know they're hungry. You know that feeling. It's mad! I cannot even buy you food! The Americans and the British have stolen it from us, straight from your mouth, Benjamin. Do you remember good food? Sweets at the _kino_?" Yes, he remembered faintly, the feelings of warmth and comfort. His father and mother happy. His mother's belly swollen with the twins. His father's laugh, his mother's smile as she stood over the stovetop and the house filled with the scent of cooking. Eating without reserve. Ice cream. There was something blissfully unreal about it all, as though it was merely fantasy.

It repeated: his father miserable from work, would come home, and made more unhappy by family, would drink and squander the piles of marks. The twins shrieked, sitting on the floor with bloated stomachs, starving. It unnerved him, the constant wailing. Ben learned one of his mother's old sayings: '_I eat with my eyes and taste with my mind.'_ A Portuguese maid taught it to her when she was young, after her father died. Ben taught it to the twins when they cried for food, repeated it in his mind when he passed the people on café patios or when he stared at the expensive cakes in bakery windows.

"The revolution has begun," his father said over a dinner of bread and bowls of wine. "It has begun with this man… this Hitler. He is strong. He has conviction. He is going to lead us, and we will live again!" His father wasn't drunk that night, or the other nights that followed. He went to meetings and joined an unofficial congregation of the National Socialist Party. He was proud again, proud of Germany and of himself. He forgot the drink for a while.

Then Ben's little sister was ill. Coughing fits at first and the doctor didn't know the cause. After dinner one day, Ben sat next to the bed where the twins slept, organising a scattered pile of marks into neat rows. His brother fussed, stirred anxiously. Ben looked up at him, saw the boy nudging his sister on the pillow. He got to his knees, a look of confusion on his face. His brother's movements grew more desperate. "Ariel?" Ben said and got no answer. She seemed unusually pale. Her lips were colourless. And then his little brother pushed her, and Ariel fell from the edge of the bed, hitting the ground with a muted thud, face toward the floor.

She rolled, so simply, like a little doll and remained still. Ben swallowed, afraid to touch her. His brother started to cry. "Ariel?" He called out again in vain. He touched her limp arm, turned her over. That same harlequin face: swollen, puckered little lips that emanated no sound, a porcelain complexion. A doll. He felt around her mouth. Not breathing. His little brother continued to wail. His mother rushed into the room, disoriented and panicking. She swatted Ben away and scooped the little body up into her arms.

His mother cried endlessly that night, and his father disappeared for weeks. When he came back, Ben's little brother had died. They were too close, the twins, vital to one another. And so he went peacefully in his sleep, chubby cheeks blue-white as the sun filtered in through the shutters, fists curled beneath his chin as though he sought to shield himself. Too little food, Ben thought. The Americans must have stolen it.

The General's gruff voice cut through his reverie.

"It was a terrible time. I lost a son to it. He died in the mines. Got crushed… "

Ben's eyebrows furrowed as he absorbed the words, unaccustomed to hearing gentleness in the General's voice. The General grew distant for a moment, took a sip of cognac and then willed his emotions away with a sinister grin, "Hitler is great! Our revenge is almost complete. We are going to win, to kill those that would threaten our freedom! We have taken our money back, and so too taken Germany from their clutches. You see, Ben? The Fuhrer is like a father, the kindest father you will ever have. He has given you life. He buys you anything that you want. Spoils you out of love. Isn't that right?"

Ben nodded. He was right, in a way. Germany was rich and there was nothing Ben couldn't have. The piles of worthless marks had value again, and were replaced with tiers of luxurious things to buy. All the food he could eat. Chocolate. Ice-cream. There was a small cinema in the village with exciting pictures about the Nazis' certain victory. He had fine clothing and shoes, hot water for baths, the cakes and pastries that Jack made for breakfast. Meat. Eggs. Candy. Fine wine and cognac. There was nothing he couldn't touch. He could consume the world for himself if he wanted to.

But there were rumours, stories that troubled him. People were being killed, and they were neither soldiers nor criminals. He was a Jew and was forced to hide it. The Jewish people wore stars on their clothes. Why? And his parents disappeared on the trains, and the children were herded into cars in packs. Screams in the distance from _Niederhagen_. Jack and Melinda hid him, protected him. They were Americans, he knew. Yet they took care of him…

"You are old enough, now, I think… " The General's voice continued to filter into Ben's consciousness, "Yes, you were old enough some time ago. You look healthy, certainly. I'm told that you're Austrian. That's good enough. Tomorrow, you'll report to me at 06:00 in my office. You know the one. Germany has come to call on you, Ben. You will raise her up, won't you? To God himself, if she asked you to?"

Ben stared blankly, nodded as the General chuckled.

"Excellent! More cognac! And if Melinda is around, do tell her to have a drink at our table. She can sit beside me."

The table erupted in a fit of laughter as the General's men caroused. Ben turned back toward the bar, headed for the kitchen, lost inside his mind:

Yes, they were American. Of the very stock that betrayed and deserted him, his family, murdered his brother and sister, bankrupted his country from an office chair with a pen and a signature on a scrap of paper. The betrayers that his father spoke of, that Hitler spoke of, that all of Germany knew had forsaken them for their position in the first war. Those people. They cooked him breakfast, lunch and dinner and hid his identity from the Nazis. They made him laugh and let him pray: he and Jack, as Jewish men, in secret of course. The enemies of Germany, the Americans, who kept him alive and helped to clothe him. Melinda with her captivating eyes, the beautiful American woman who spoke perfect German. And Jack, with whom he had so much in common. He considered Jack a father: the kind from American pictures that respected him and would never beat him.

The Americans were not the enemies then. Who else could it have been? Not the Jews, Ben knew, because he was Jewish. He wasn't a criminal. The Germans? No. His father and mother were German and Jewish, and Jack was German and Jewish, and Braun and Becker were Germans.

Ben walked into the kitchen and sat on a stool in the corner, staring at the blank, white wall. Braun. He saw the body rolling under the wheels, crushed and mangled and dead. Rolling again, the memory repeated over and over. Just like his sister. Rolling like an object -a rag doll, limbs that twisted up and bled underneath the rubber tires. Braun pushed him out of the way. Braun was dead because of his carelessness. His fear. He was not a man. He was a coward. Unfit. They would call him unfit.

He looked up and saw Braun's face in the wall, the eyes and the crushed nose forming in the plaster, crawling out toward him. He lifted his hand and touched the face. It was hard but smooth. _Ani Mitzta'er!_ _I haven't forgotten!_ He couldn't pray because he was Jewish, couldn't exist because he was Jewish. Was anyone listening? Braun's face was twisted in a mask of horror, mouth agape, skin whitewashed and stuck inside the wall. _Adonai! Adonai! Adon HaShamayim veEretz! Are you watching now?_ The Americans were not enemies, Jews and Germans were innocent. People were dying in strange and horrible ways. People disappeared. Bodies trampled to death beneath the tires of cars and died of starvation. The Jews were marked with stars. The Jews were hiding. Why? Everyone was guilty. He was a coward, a murderer. _I am hollow._ His parents had been vaporized and he lived like a prince. The evil Nazis liked him, the good Nazis loved him. People were packed into trains like cattle. People were shot against the walls and forced to march to their death in masses. On the stovetops, bodies boiled and bodies burned, and he served them out on plates, to the customers, where they were eaten, devoured by gluttonous pigs. Braun's face began to bleed, dripped scarlet down the white wall. _Abraham. Your people struggle in vain! You have filled me with promises and now I am empty. Adonai, my God, we have toiled for you. Our penance is done! Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? Do you see your people now?_

"Ben?"

Melinda nudged his shoulder, but he remained motionless, staring at the wall. Jack walked up to them, stared at the boy.

"He isn't responding," Mel said, "I've tried for at least two minutes now."

"Shit. He's doing it again. Get Helen."

Melinda turned to leave as Jack prodded Ben's shoulder. "Ben! C'mon. Ben, answer me!"

The boy turned, face stoic. He glanced up at Jack, stood up and straightened himself, "Today is May 5th, 1944."

Jack gazed at him, searching his young, dark eyes clouded by spiked blonde bangs.

"Tomorrow… " Ben continued, pausing a moment as he thought. His expression became resolute, "Tomorrow, I lift Germany up to God."

He wandered into the house, oblivious to the voice that called after him.

***

She watched the drifting smoke, traced the twisting white lines in the air with her fingertips. "Does anyone know what's wrong with him?"

"No," Melinda replied, finishing the last of her cigarette. She daubed it into the ashtray and settled back onto the bed.

"Is he really leaving for Omaha?"

"Yeah. In a few days. After his meeting with the General."

Janice sighed, feeling nauseated. She steadied herself. "So it is."

"Do you miss France?" Mel asked, propping herself up on her elbows.

"No."

They were silent for a moment. Janice stretched, listened to her bones and joints creaking. It was common for her to enjoy the quiet. It was her sanctuary. But when Melinda was in the room, it was the still, dead air that she could not stand. Something deep within her yearned for connection: a vivacious desire for survival. It brought her out of her daily hypnosis, out of the colourless haze of her performances. With Melinda, she felt little need for delusion, felt less vulnerable.

"I won't miss any of these places… will you?" She asked.

Melinda inhaled a deep breath, "Miss what?

"Germany."

She chuckled, "If I ever got the chance to leave, you mean? Not really. Well… a part of me is here, and I do love Germany. Yes, I suppose I would miss it."

Janice closed her eyes and nodded.

Mel ran her tongue along her bottom lip, lost in thought. Over a year since Janice arrived, hiding in the wine cellar. She saw the grieved face that emerged from the shadows, eyes wide in shock, lips paralyzed and the deep lines of wear beneath her eyes. The first few nights spent with her were filled with it: shame and regret. She knew that Janice felt it too, despite her smile, the quiet laughter. They no longer knew each other.

And then her transformation: the profound, levelling insanity. Was it insanity? Melinda stared at Janice's tranquil expression, her charming lips and childish face. She traced the scar on Janice's arm. No… affliction? Yes, affliction, insufferable but not incurable. Somewhere, deeply buried was the woman she met in Greece, the brilliant and beautiful archaeologist that toiled over the translation of the Xena Scrolls, artefacts splayed out on her mattress at the hotel.

A soft smile played at her lips as she remembered the months spent in Greece after the adventure in the crypt. Was it really all a dream? Jack stayed down the hall from them, postponing his trip to America. There was something he had to do in Germany, he told them. He was heading to the Alme Valley soon. He was boyish and witty. Charismatic. He appeared at the door to her room one night, sheepishly inquired on the scrolls and offered to buy her and Janice dinner. They ordered it to their room, turned away from work to enjoy a bottle of wine and a game of cards. He and Janice smoked cigars and teased her when she refused to do the same, lighting a cigarette instead. He was always warm and polite. Thoughtful. His shy gaze would make her blush. She knew, even then, how much he liked her.

And Janice. She used to wear glasses when she read, eyes squinting in concentration. A crease on her brow, her tongue between her teeth, resting on her bottom lip. It was the absent pose as she worked, motionless, reading scroll after scroll. Melinda watched her from the kitchen table, books and papers scattered around her. Pretty, that fiery red hair curled behind her ears, her cheeks golden tan, the quirk of her eyebrow when she found something interesting, her glasses falling down the bridge of her nose. Then morning again and the ritual would repeat. She would teach Mel this and that, share a tale of a dig in Egypt or the Congo. But when the dawn broke and bathed Janice's slumbering form in golden light, Mel could watch her in private, stayed the night sleeping in the nearby chair. She studied the contour of her jaw, remembered the colour of her long lashes, her lips swollen and parted during sleep, her chest rising and falling rhythmically. Janice with her hair fanned out on the duvet as the day filtered in, still fully clothed with the scrolls unrolled on the covers beside her, the beloved fedora balanced on the ledge of the bed.

"What happened in Greece after I left?" Melinda frowned at the sound of her own voice, raw and unfamiliar.

Janice sighed, inhaled a deep breath.

"Did we find the scrolls?"

Janice nodded.

Mel's face lit up, "So that wasn't a dream."

"No it wasn't. Not that part."

"Then we did have them… translated them at the hotel… "

Janice nodded, the hint of a smile tugging at the corners of her lips, "I remember that."

"Me too," Melinda said, a large grin on her face.

"I do want to tell you, Melinda… " Janice began.

"It's okay… you don't have to if you don't want to."

She swallowed. "After you left for Germany… that night I went to a bar… had some drinks. Some Greek boy found me, chatted me up… "

Mel smiled, adjusted her position so she could prop her chin up on her arm.

Janice ran her tongue along her bottom lip, "He was nice. I… God, I forget his name. He had very clear eyes… like yours. Clear and blue. He walked back with me, talking like he wasn't sure what we were going to do. He thought it was charming, I guess. But when we got to the hotel… "

Melinda's brow creased, "When you got to the hotel…?"

"It was on fire."

Melinda's eyes widened with fright at the realisation. She rose slightly from the bed, "The scrolls!"

She cleared her throat and looked down at her lap, voice low and raw, "Gone."

Melinda's face twisted in a mask of horror, tears collected in her eyes and she covered her mouth, "All of them?"

Janice nodded.

"My God… " Melinda cried, her tone defeated and wavering with emotion.

A tear escaped Janice's eye, "The police wouldn't investigate, so I tried on my own. I started to make some ground when I was taken into the police station. I didn't have any I.D. It was all destroyed in the fire. I didn't… I _don't_ exist. Not without my papers… and everything is in America. I couldn't prove anything. And when I was taken in… Smythe was there. He told me everything. He was with the C.I.A. They were going to make me a deal. Complete a few jobs in Europe and I would be granted re-entry into the United States without question. I would get my papers back, my life, my identity. All I had to do were a few _simple_ tasks to help the war effort."

"So you went to France," Mel was barely audible.

"Yeah," she replied.

"Do you know who set the fire?"

Janice nodded.

"Who?"

After a long pause, "Smythe's team."

"What! Why?"

"Our own government, Mel. C'mon. Think about it! What would happen if those scrolls were authenticated? Went public? Independent female warriors with strength equal to and greater to entire legions of men? Julius Caesar dying because that… Xena convinced Brutus to betray him? Women controlling the course of history? It would make Homer and Virgil wrong, every history textbook wrong. They feared a revolution... "

"So they burnt them."

She nodded, "No one will ever know."

Melinda sat quietly, stunned.

"I didn't tell you," Janice said, her voice small, "Because I thought it would break your spirit."

Mel's cold fingertips found hers, entwined them together. Janice refused to look at her.

"And you?"

Silence.

"Janice?"

She swallowed. "What's done is done."

Janice yanked her fingers away and turned on her side, faced the wall. She squeezed her eyes shut and a nervous quiet engulfed the room. The stress drained her, and struggling against the chaos of her mind, Janice fell into a deep, exhausted sleep that numbed her to sensation.

When she awoke, in the middle of the night, Melinda was behind her, breathing heavily. Her long arms reached out: one traveling over Janice's shoulder, the other beneath her neck to meet in the middle of her chest, clutching her body in a tight embrace. Janice trembled, felt her back and bottom pressed into the silk of Melinda's nightgown and the contours of the nude body beneath it. Melinda nuzzled her ear and Janice's nostrils flared with the overpowering scent of gin. Janice froze, controlled her breathing, willed herself to sleep. Mel's hand stroked her abdomen through her undershirt, hot breath and the smell of hard liquor hit Janice in waves. Minutes passed and at last, the hand stopped, breathing became even. Melinda fell asleep, her nose buried into the hair at the back of Janice's neck.

Long, agonizing hours passed until Janice let the heat of Mel's body coax her into slumber.

***

Two knocks. Any more would mean Gestapo, any less would be ignored. A Nazi flag was draped over the top of the doorframe. Her patience waned. She knocked again. There was shuffling behind the doorway and then he emerged, a glass full of whiskey. Barely acknowledging her, he stepped aside to let her in. Her boots echoed on the wooden floor. The home of a Nazi officer.

There was a candle on the kitchen table, a flame burning away the wax. The golden drapes were drawn to keep the house dark and away from curious eyes. She walked behind him, feeling nervous. He knew who she was and she knew that he was a friend. But the swastika on his lapel stood pronounced. A symbol of protection from the East. A sign of hatred and destruction for all eternity. She was forced to wear it too.

He opened the cellar door and they headed down the stairs, boots clicking on the solid concrete. It was much smaller than the cellar at Melinda and Jack's. The walls were spotted with dark stone and grey cement. There was a wooden table in the far corner and a single light bulb in the ceiling. Beneath the stairs was a plain, white fridge.

_They won't talk to me, _Jack told her at the café over breakfast. _They want you to use the radio at Becker's. Too many ears, I guess._ He drew a map, told her to hide it in the rim of her hat and to follow it. So she did.

Becker lifted a loose stone from the ground and pulled out a large metal box, followed by a desk microphone. She helped him with the transceiver as he connected the power. When it was setup, he awkwardly smiled at her and disappeared up the steps. She turned the radio on and walked back toward the staircase to see if Becker closed the door. Satisfied, she went back to the radio and input the frequency. Strange nostalgia. She spoke the transmission in code, afraid that Becker could hear:

"Rembrandt calling Arcadia. Come in, Arcadia."

The radio whirred, and she jerked in surprise as the muffled reply came through.

- _Rembrandt received. This is Arcadia. Transmit your message._

"Awaiting orders, sir."

There was a high pitched shriek of feedback and Janice stepped back from the table to cover her ears. The static came back, the scratching sound empty of voices. Her brows furrowed. She pressed down on the buttons and spoke into the desk mic:

"Arcadia, do you copy?"

Another burst of feedback and then static. She reached to turn the radio off, but the response stopped her.

- _Well, well. The prodigal son returns. Have you enjoyed your vacation in Germany?_

"Smythe!"

- _Shh! No names you stupid woman!_ _I do believe we've met. I've heard rumours that you've… how shall we say, 'gone round the twist'? Are you quite capable now, of completing your mission?_

"You asshole! If you had any idea what I've been though-"

- _Language! Unbecoming for a lady, you know. And yes, I've seen precisely what you've been through. Though that will have to wait._

"How's that?"

- _No, no, my dear. No time for idle chit-chat. This is the last location you need to visit. You are looking for stolen art and gold. Understand? Latitude: 50.81667, Longitude: 10.11667 in the state of Thuringia. You have one week to prepare, then get on the train at 23:00h. Complete this task and send us a radio confirmation. You will get what you've been promised. Arcadia out._

"Roger. Over and out."

Janice removed her SS cap and ran a hand through her red-gold hair. One week. The end of the madness was in sight. She sighed. She would be going home: back to America, to New Jersey. The thought of her house made her ache, collecting dust in her absence, abandoned, grey and filmy with the daylight. She longed for it, for her study with the towering library, her personal collection of artefacts, her bedroom. It would take her backward, into the past, before Germany, before Greece, to the mundane and trivial struggles of her former life.

She dismantled the radio and put it back into the ground, covering it with the loose stone. She bounded back up the stairs, keeping the coordinates in her head, repeating them over and over. Acknowledging Becker, Janice left the house, smoothed the creases in her uniform and headed toward the café.

She burst through the front door of the home, locking the door behind her. Janice quickly stepped out of her boots and padded into the bedroom, searching the bookcase. Her index fingers traced the spines of various anthologies. She pulled out the books with titles that captured interest, books on German culture and geography, a book of world maps. In one of the books, she removed an enlarged map of Germany, the state and topography details carefully etched into the paper. She searched the coordinates, latitude: 50.82, longitude: 10.12, tracing a path with her fingernails. She stopped at the converging point, her eyes narrowing on the closest name. In the state of Thuringia, her last task: _Merkers._

The inked name stood in relief from the page. Merkers. Catch the train at 23:00h for Merkers in one week. She closed the books, putting them neatly in the bookcase. It all felt unreal. Soon she would be home. The nightmare would end, the screaming would stop, the homunculus would die and she would be fine. It was a dream.

She went into the café and sat down at an empty table. Jack went over and sat in the chair opposite; Melinda approached with a glass of wine. Janice took the offering and gulped it down. They stared at her expectant. She looked around the room, made sure no one had any interest in them. Janice cleared her throat.

"I leave in one week."

"Where to?" Jack whispered.

Janice leaned forward, "Merkers."

"The mines," Jack said under his breath, eyes flickering over the tablecloth, "So it's true."

Melinda's expression was unreadable. Janice glanced at her before Mel turned, briskly heading into the kitchen. Jack frowned.

"You know of it?" Janice asked him.

"People talk a lot when they're drunk. They say it's a gold mine."

They both stood, "Then I guess I'm headed to the right place."

"It's heavily guarded."

"One week to prepare," she said.

He brushed past her, said in a low voice, "We'll start today."

***

The days passed and Janice trained, perfected her role as the young male soldier, the new guard to be posted at Merkers: Christofer Gottlieb. She bought a new rifle, an MP40 from the Nazis, made sure they knew her face. She had to be properly integrated. There were enough suspicions: her tanned complexion, her height. She had to dispel the rumours.

Becker helped her, improved her image among the guards and officers. She had drinks with them, caroused with them at the café and gradually, they treated her as a naïve boy, an inferior among their ranks but a Nazi just the same. A patriot. She would play cards with them, make bets with them, sing with them. She would watch the bargirls flirt, tempted them when prompted. She would make the General laugh. She noticed the unusual regard with which the Resistance treated her. She ignored it. Sacrifice was necessary.

At night, Becker would accompany her to the cellar and they would sit at the table between the wine barrels. She did not reveal the room that she had been hiding in, instead remained in the area where the Resistance met. He showed her pictures of the mine tunnels, blueprints of Merkers. She studied them, learned every room and how to reach it. She learned how to escape, knowing that if she could not, she would have to take her own life. She would not be captured again.

One night, a crowd of Resistance members joined them. Jack was at the front, assuming Braun's position as leader. They reviewed inventory, future plans and swapped news from the battle fronts. Jack told of reports from American advances, others recounted the news of the Soviets. The Nazis were losing the war. Everyone was hopeful. It would all be over soon.

Jack called Melinda up to the front of the room and she eyed him with a curious expression, turned to Janice for an answer. Janice grinned at her and Mel returned it with a wide smile. She headed through the crowd, stepping gingerly through the seated Resistance members.

"Here she is," Jack said as Melinda emerged, narrowing her eyes at the crowd.

"I wanted to celebrate," he said, "this amazing twist of fortune. I don't think we thought it would ever come."

There were nods and sounds of agreement from the collection of bodies. Melinda stood awkwardly nibbling on her bottom lip, her hands folded and resting at her waist.

"We may actually be able to get back to the lives we wished to live before this war came over us," Jack continued, "And to mark such an occasion… "

He reached into his pocket, turning to Melinda. There were sporadic chuckling noises and whispers from the crowd. He removed a small box and held it up to her, gaze fixated on her face. Parts of the crowd stood and blocked Janice's view. With deliberate slowness, Jack removed the top of the box, revealing a small diamond ring. Melinda gasped and covered her mouth in shock.

"I had to shoot a few Nazis for this," he said jokingly, and those who heard his quiet voice began to laugh. "Melinda," he began, "Throughout the years… this whole hellish ordeal, you have been what has kept me positive, kept me alive. And if you will let me… I'd like to spend the rest of my life with you."

Her mouth hung agape as she stared at him, eyes glossed with disbelief. Janice stood on the bench and stared over the silent congregation. She saw the ring and held her breath.

"Jack… " Mel's voice caught in her throat.

"Marry me, Melinda."

She glanced at the crowd, searching until she found Janice. Something flashed across her eyes, and then Janice smiled. Melinda turned back to him.

"I… " Blue eyes flickered back toward the prying, bulbous gazes and then settled on Jack, "Yes."

The men erupted in a cheer and Janice hesitantly joined them as she watched Jack remove the ring and slip it onto Melinda's finger, embracing her, kissing her. They blushed from the attention of the crowd.

When the Resistance had gone, Janice paced her room. She told Melinda to stay with Jack that night and she went without much persuasion.

"Are you sure?" Melinda stared at her, grimacing. Her voice was unusually quiet.

"Yeah," Janice said, a smile on her lips, "Enjoy tonight. I'll be fine. I've been doing much better, haven't I?"

Melinda nodded, pursed her lips, "Okay. I'll see you in the morning."

And she disappeared up the steps.

Janice was glad for it. She knew Jack expected it. Perhaps Melinda did too. It was the first night they spent away from each other, and for Janice, it was endless. Sleepless.

_"Why did you shoot me?"_

Janice turned, sitting on the bed. A boy in soldier's garb sat at the wooden desk, chubby face staring down at her with crystal-grey eyes. His jacket was matted with blood and bullet holes, ears and blonde hair stained with crimson. So young.

_"Why?" _He had an eerie, whiny voice that sounded breathless and high-pitched.

Her jaw tightened as she sat up on the bed, "Because you were going to shoot me." A pause. "How old are you?"

_"Fifteen."_

She ran a hand through her hair, stared at the crusted scarlet at the corners of his mouth. Lung-shot. She remembered the blood frothing from his lips, the curious eyes. _Damn, stupid boy. Leave me alone! Leave me alone!_

"What is your name?" She asked.

He didn't answer, unnerved her with his stare. She lay down on the bed about to turn away from him when he replied,

_"0-4-8."_

She swallowed. She didn't want to know. Her mouth moved in spite of her and the words formed, "What were you trying to tell me? When I shot you… your mouth moved. You tried to speak…" Silence. Then the whiney voice, trembling as though on the brink of tears:

_"I don't want to die."_

She willed him to disappear, covered her face.

_I do._

At dawn, she circled the wine cellar, convinced that there was little point in trying to rest. She polished her gun, dismantled it, put it together and polished it again. She reviewed the photos of Merkers. Suddenly, her stomach rumbled, hunger gaining influence. She walked up into the larder and glanced at the clock. 05:00h. Breakfast.

Janice stared at the stove and the cupboards filled with food. She had always been ineffectual in the kitchen. She ran her hand through her hair. A sound from the café floor startled her and she felt around her waist for her gun. She cursed, realising the holster was in her room with her uniform. She wore only an undershirt and dark slacks. She grabbed a knife from one of the drawers.

The larder door from the café opened and she pressed her back against the wall. She turned the corner as she heard the figure approach, held the knife prone. A high-pitched shriek emanated from the woman in front of her and Janice stopped as she felt recognition settle in. It was Helen and Ben following close behind her. She sighed.

"Christ, Janice!" Helen said, placing her hand over her heart, "Good morning to you too."

"Sorry," Janice mumbled, putting the knife back into the drawer, "Thought you were breaking in."

"Thought wrong," Helen said, heading for the stove. "Had breakfast yet?"

"Was just about to."

"What were you making?"

"Hadn't gotten to that part."

Helen chuckled, "Alright then. Eggs, toast, and there's some salami that we can have."

Janice nodded.

She sat at the small, circular table in the corner and Ben joined her at the opposite end. He was silent. She nodded toward him and he acknowledged her. Her stomach audibly gurgled and she listened to the sounds of the frying pan crackling, absorbed the emanating aroma of food. Janice obtained a portion of salami and placed it on a cutting board, grabbed a knife. She put it between herself and Ben on the table, cut a slice and ate it. Ben put some bread in the oven and stared blankly as it toasted.

At last, the dishes were finished cooking and they gathered around the small table. Janice offered Helen a seat but she insisted on standing between her and Ben. Janice was the first to stab at her meal, and she watched as Ben shovelled it into his mouth. He didn't take any pleasure in it, attacked it out of necessity. Convincing theatre. Janice knew it well.

"Eat up you two," Helen said, reaching for a piece of toast, "You have important days ahead."

Janice nodded. Ben was to leave tomorrow morning and she had to take the train the night after that. Helen ran a hand through the shock of gold-blonde hair atop Ben's head.

"He's getting a haircut today," she said, directing her comment at Janice. She turned, pointing her fork at Janice, the ends dripping with the bright yellow yolk of an egg.

"And so are you."

_***_

It was late morning before Melinda and Jack appeared. The café was already open and Janice was helping Ben take customers' orders as Helen plated them. The Nazi officers teased her for it, poked fun at her peasant clothing, took pleasure in complicating orders to watch her stumble through them. She pretended not to notice.

Melinda arrived and took over her position, told Janice it was better to get dressed in her uniform. Mel seemed remarkably pleased with herself, satisfied. Janice smiled at her and raised her eyebrows in suggestion: a coy expression that made Melinda blush. Jack whistled as he walked into the café, bid good morning to the customers. The perceptive observers caught the ring on Melinda's finger and flustered themselves with the news, inquiring anxiously. Janice caught Ben staring at Melinda and Jack. She turned to Ben and nudged his arm, stuck out her tongue with her finger pointed into her mouth in mock gesture. A grin tugged at the corners of his lips. She smiled at him, heading into the larder toward the cellar.

After lunch, Helen cleared a space in the kitchens and placed two wooden chairs in the center of the floor. Becker snuck in through the house entrance and Ben followed him. Janice sat quietly, hair dripping from the shower, narrowing her eyes at Helen as she reached for a pair of scissors. Ben occupied the chair beside her, waiting as Becker began to trim his hair. Janice frowned and her brow creased as she heard the sharp, scratching sound of the metal blades severing the strands of her auburn hair. The scraps fell to the floor, collected in an array of red and gold, piling over the light hardwood.

Helen was gentle, careful not to pull to hard but the act threatened to unnerve Janice as she remembered the cold draft of her prison cell, the yanking grip of the SS officer as the blades sheared her once prided locks, cherished and cared for since childhood. They took everything from her: her beauty, her body.

She was a commodity, auctioned to science for the privilege of a few rich Nazis, sold to the Americans as a hapless lackey, and now to the German Resistance, _the good ol' boys_, the sacred, moral liberals. She bit her lip. She could not scream and dared not stir. Silence.

Ben knew it too, hushed and secluded in the captivity of his mind. Becker finished with him first, wet the boy's hair and parted it on the side with a comb like the Fuhrer's. Standard uniform. Helen walked in front of her, sucked on her bottom lip as she scrutinized her handiwork. Satisfied, she took the wet comb and parted Janice's hair, now too short and too thin to reach the tops of her ears.

"Done," Helen's voice chimed as she held a mirror up to her.

Janice hardly recognized herself. She was odd looking, certainly masculine but child-like. She pursed her lips, unsure of how to feel. She gave the mirror to Ben and he put it on the counter without pausing to look at himself.

Becker stared at Janice, arms folded over his chest, "In your uniform, you'll do wonderfully." He smiled and turned to Helen who smiled with him. Janice's eyes narrowed at them. Something lurked behind their grinning faces, an air of mockery, some juvenile amusement. Janice averted her gaze and hopped off of the chair.

She headed into the cellar and dressed in her uniform, re-read the books Melinda loaned her over a year ago. She touched the fringes of her cropped, damp hair and squeezed her eyes shut, staying in bed for the remainder of the day.

***

Janice sat with her feet propped up on the bed, staring at the page of a novel. Her SS cap was abandoned on the bedpost hanging with her blazer and belts. Her gun was in its holster on the desk weighting down piles of aerial photographs. Her boots were placed neatly beside the door.

The lock inside the iron door clicked and the hinges groaned as Melinda entered. Janice put her book down on the bed, regarded her with curiosity. She did not expect Melinda for another hour.

Mel approached, setting two glass tumblers on the nightstand and dangled a bottle of cognacin front of her, a playful grin on her face. Janice smirked and arched her brow, reaching for one of the tumblers and tossing the book onto the desk opposite the bed.

Janice watched as Melinda broke the seal on the bottle and filled her proffered glass with the bronze coloured liquid, "Congratulations are in order."

Melinda grimaced, "How's that?"

Janice gestured with her glass toward the engagement ring.

"Oh," Mel said, concealing a smile, "Yes. Thank you."

She filled her glass and sat beside Janice, obtaining the ashtray from the drawer and the cigarette pack from her pocket. She removed the paper wrappers and handed a long cylinder to Janice, tossing the matchbox at her. Janice struck the match and waited for Melinda to place a cigarette between her lips, lighting it first and then lighting her own. Melinda chuckled.

"You're quite the gentleman."

Janice took a long drag from her cigarette, replied in a mocking tone, "_Ha-ha_."

It earned her a smile. Melinda sipped her drink, reached out toward her and ran her slender fingers through Janice's clipped hair. Janice swatted her hand away.

"I don't like it."

Melinda giggled, "No? But it's charming. I like it like this."

She nodded and they fell silent, sipping their drinks, smoke collecting in a cloud in front of them. Janice peered over at the bottle of cognac.

"_Hennessy_," she said quietly, "That has to be getting expensive… "

Melinda shrugged, drank from her glass and raised the cigarette to her lips, mixing the flavour of alcohol and smoke. She poured herself another drink and turned to offer more to her friend, eyes glancing nervously at the bed sheets.

"There's no one else I'd rather drink it with."

Janice offered a half-smile, downed the rest of her drink to cover it up and held the glass out to be refilled.

The muffled sound of a radio emanated through the ceiling, barely audible. Janice craned her neck to listen, staring up in the direction of the sound. She smiled, recognising the tune.

"What is it?" Melinda asked.

"Listen."

She paused, eyes narrowed in concentration. "… Glenn Miller?"

Janice nodded, "Moonlight Serenade."

Mel lay back on the pillow, leaning against the headboard. Janice glanced over at her.

"Do you remember it?"

Melinda nodded, put the cigarette in her mouth and exhaled a puff of smoke, "Greece." After a long pause, she continued, "Feels like another lifetime. I thought it was banned here?"

"It is," Janice said, exhaling the smoke through her nostrils, "Must be Jack playing an American station." She frowned, "That's dangerous."

"I know," Mel replied, "He's happy. He gets careless when he's happy… "

Janice finished her cigarette, and Melinda gave her another, lit it. "I first heard this song in New Jersey… "

"Princeton?"

She smiled, "Of course," chuckled, "So you remember that too."

"Mmhmmm… " Mel said, lips attached to the cigarette as she drained the last of it. Smouldering embers glowed in the dim light. "God, I miss home… "

"Me too."

"I've never been to Princeton."

Janice gulped her drink and cringed from the large blast of alcohol burning down her throat. It settled warm in the pit of her stomach, "Well, I've never been to Abbeville."

Melinda sighed, "Maybe when the war is over -"

Janice shook her head, "No… nothing will be the same."

Mel reached for the bottle of _Hennessey_ and poured Janice another drink. Janice moistened her lips, stared at the emptying bottle.

"Are you sure?"

Mel nodded, "I insist."

Janice accepted the drink and balanced her cigarette in the hand holding the glass. She ran her fingertips back and forth over her temple. Melinda peered at her from the rim of the tumbler.

"Do you really hate it that much?"

"Hate what?"

"Your hair," she said simply, drinking and bringing the glass down from her lips.

Janice sighed, stared at the wall for a while before she responded, "It reminds me of when they cut it."

Mel watched her with mourning, willing the memory of her friend to surmount the impostor: the broken woman. She fantasized about the day that Janice would return to her, restored and remade into the friend she had grown so fond of. Her faith in the vision drained from her slowly.

"I know you want me to tell you," Janice said, "But I can't."

"No," Mel said, "Whatever it is that has so… changed you… I don't want to know."

Janice nodded, contemplative, "Is it all bad?"

"No. Not always."

Melinda cupped the glass tumbler in both hands and stared as though deciding what to do with it. She brought the drink to her mouth and drained it, reaching for the bottle to pour another. She tilted it back and concentrated on the liquid coating her tongue, cool as it rolled to the back of her mouth, burning in a path down her chest to her stomach. She sighed, breath hitching.

"I can't let you leave."

Janice's head snapped up and she gazed at her in confusion, "What?"

Mel chewed at her bottom lip, freed it from her teeth reddened and raw, "It's too dangerous. You'll be killed. It's idiotic… all of this!"

Janice turned to her, "Is that why you came down here?"

"No," Mel said, grimaced from insult.

Janice clenched her jaw, rose from the bed and walked around to the night table, pulled another cigarette from the frayed pack and lit it. She paced the small area, inhaled the smoke, lightweight and soothing in her veins, mingling with the alcohol. Pacifying. She daubed the cigarette into the ashtray, turned to face her, "I'm going, Melinda."

Mel placed the tumbler on the night table and rose to stand towering over Janice's smaller gait, "Why?"

"I refuse to stay here… I can't stay here. I need to go home." _To be purified_, she thought.

"Janice -"

"It's not about you, Melinda. I can't do this anymore! I want my identity back. I'm nothing, no one. Do you have any idea what it's like to be erased? To be stuck here without even a little hope of getting out?"

"Yes!" Melinda snapped. "You think you're the only one who feels trapped?"

"It's not the same," she replied, shaking her head, "You can escape. That little stash of yours: your passports, money. It's something, a possibility. You can hold onto that. Even if I had what you have, I couldn't get back into America, not until they clear my name. They won't do that until I finish this!"

"That's not true," Mel pleaded, "They're lying to you, using you." She stammered as she spoke, "I could get Jack to help you. I'll get you new papers. I'll get people at immigration involved. We'll get around it. It's just bureaucracy. We've beaten it here; we can beat it in America. They can't lock you out."

"They have!" Janice said defiantly, her face flushed with anger. She watched as Melinda's eyes glazed with tears, cheeks, nose and the tips of her ears went red as her pain threatened to surface. "Please, Mel," she continued, feeling her energy wane, "This is just something I _have_ to do."

Melinda pulled her into an embrace, voice catching in her throat, "I won't lose you again." Janice wrapped her arms around Mel's neck, burying her face into her shoulder and long black hair. The hands at the small of her back grasped her shirt. Warm, shuddering breaths electrified the nerves on her neck and the tip of her ear as Melinda's voice reverberated into it, "Don't."

Janice sighed, "Mel -"

"Pretend," she whispered, interrupting her, "I just want to hear it… "

Janice kept still, felt her pulse throbbing in her temples, on her back beneath Melinda's hands. _It was just an act; it didn't have to be true. Make them happy. Comfort them._ She stared at the wall, tried to distance herself. Melinda's heartbeat drummed in Janice's ears, though her chest.

"I promise you, Melinda."

When she pulled away, Janice cupped Mel's face in her hands, watched a stray tear trickle down her flushed cheek beneath the rim of her glasses. Words were cheapened things.

Melinda froze as soft lips closed over her own with agonizing slowness, a whimper struggled from her throat. Gentle, profound calm. She relished in it: felt the novelty of it before the shock settled in. Warm, aggressive desire quivered through her abdomen, sparking arousal further down, each wave of craving more demanding than the one before. She tilted her head absently and leaned into the contact, struggling against her body's response.

As they broke apart, the wet sound of their lips filled their ears. Janice looked up, hands shaking. She was terrified by what she had done. Melinda's eyes became wild with fear and she pulled herself from the embrace, stumbled backward into the wall. Her hand snaked up to her lips, fingertips brushing the swollen flesh.

Melinda felt her pulse lodge into her throat. She kissed her. Janice kissed her and she was a woman. Her body trembled violently. It wasn't her fault. Her body reacted from shock. The response was reflexive. Mel covered her mouth with her hand and muffled a horrified sob. She was insane and now it was certain. Janice was insane.

Janice watched her back into the door like a wounded animal, her shaking hands searching for the latch. Janice stood petrified, legs fixed to the ground, jaw clamped shut. The homunculus in her brain awoke to tear up the flesh inside of her head. She stared as Melinda fumbled with the door, unlocked it and slammed it shut, the sound of her shoes thrumming on the up the stairs outside.

Janice collapsed on the bed, staring up at the ceiling. She was sinking, fading into the sewage of her brain. Swallowed in the nausea of rejection, Janice wept quietly into the pillow.

Laughter: evil and wicked cackling. A low voice, his voice, delighted by her misery.

She turned. He was next to the bed, knees bent as though sitting in a chair, hands folded in his lap. The severed flaps of his throat twitched as he laughed maniacally. The curls at the side of his bald head bounced as his chest heaved. Dr. Hertz.

_"You can't even save yourself, can you?"_ His voice was thin, sickening.

"Shut up."

He laughed again. She covered her face in her hands, drowning to the sound of laughter, desperate to claw out of the madness, to get back to the empty room as he shouted, _"Faster! Go on, try! Fight like you do. We love to see you fail."_

_Shut up, all of you! Please, please, please… _She sobbed, giving in, rocking back and forth, hitting the back of her head on the headboard.

***

Morning. The tender rays of sun lit the world in pale yellow gold, warming the cool air that surrounded them. The familiar scent of rich earth, the smell of summer, filled their nostrils. They stood in a line: Janice, Helen, Melinda and Jack. In front of them, Ben swung his brown duffel bag onto his back, cold eyes staring up at them. Removed, he was dressed in soldier's uniform, listening to the mechanical sounds of the train behind him.

To Janice, he nodded, a half-smile on his lips. Understanding. She held her hand out to him and he shook it firmly. With Helen, he hugged her and she kissed his forehead, though Janice noticed the exchange was indifferent. Bizzare. Helen sobbed but there were no tears in her eyes. Janice continued to observe him.

Ben moved on to Melinda who kissed his cheek and embraced him. He gazed into her eyes as they broke apart, his jaw cradled between her fine, alabaster hands. At last, she let him go and he turned to Jack. He put his duffel bag down and Jack embraced him. As he pulled away and bent to pick up his bag, they shared a knowing glance, a coveted knowledge between them that pierced through his daze.

The conductor called and Ben lingered on the vision of Melinda and Jack. Finally, he turned, headed into the train car to disappear as the steam hissed into the atmosphere and the groaning machinery crawled forward.

The day passed without a word from her; Melinda would not look at her. Janice grew frustrated, drank with Becker on the patio, watching the orange sun drift blithely into the plum-gray clouds of sunset. She raised the wine to her lips, savoured the tart aftertaste on her tongue before she swallowed it. Staring at the sky, painted the warm colours of dusk, she couldn't decide if she liked it. The sun was glowing; a perfectly tinted mass of light, burning fire on its swollen surface. It looked playful from the safety of earth. A child's toy.

She took another sip of wine and regarded it bitterly. Burning and obliterating mass of fire, the same torch that illuminated the world. Life was a destructive force, chaos a natural process. It was order that was human-made, imposed on the docile earth. Was it chaos or order that damaged it more? Janice shrugged. There was little point in knowing. The world would continue to blunder beneath the marching boots of soldiers' feet.

"It's beautiful, isn't it?"

Janice shook her head, startled by Becker's voice, "What?"

"The sunset," he said, reaching in his pocket for a packet of cigarettes.

"Yes… of course." A performance of necessity. _Do tricks for us!_ She eyed the cigarettes, "I thought it was against the law to smoke?"

He placed a white cylinder between his lips, pinched another from the package and offered it to her, "Some of us can get away with it."

She took the cigarette and he struck a match to light it. Smoke escaped from the corners of her lips as she puffed on the cylinder. Her flesh numbed, pulse calmed at the influx of the starchy, customary flavour. She inhaled slowly, filled her lungs with it and exhaled in ecstasy. Becker eyed her curiously.

"You seem… distracted." He leaned back in the cast iron chair and tilted his head toward the sky, cigarette smouldering between his lips.

Janice shook her head, "I'm not."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes," she replied, her jaw clenched.

The sound of their breathing was exaggerated as they smoked their cigarettes, streams of fine, gray lines coagulating in a swirling haze around them. Becker was examining her from his seat like a specimen. Janice turned to him, narrowed her gaze.

"What's so damn interesting?"

Becker chuckled, leaned in close to whisper, "What a harsh woman you are. Are all American women like you?"

Janice looked away from him, stared at the dwindling sunset, "No."

He tossed the finished cigarette into the ashtray, reached for the package and lit another, "Are they like Melinda?"

She cringed at the name, a wave of anger burning through her. _Melinda._ "Yeah. They're like her."

Jack walked onto the patio with another bottle of wine in his arms. He motioned toward the bottle and Janice took it gratefully. _Celebrate while you can, _he said under his breath; the other customers were sitting too close, _It's your last night. _And she placed the bottle in the center of the table, her eyes flashed toward Becker, finding his expression peculiar: shamefaced.

It occurred to her how young he looked, that behind his composure he knew tragedy, knew combat. Back from the Russian front last year, death and deformity became a routine display: the morning and afternoon show in the dug-out forts, running blind through buildings saturated with enemies and automatic rifles, men yelling just before a grenade bounced off the wall and blew them apart. Darkness and exploding shells. Shrapnel lodged in soldiers' eyes and mines that exploded at the waist. His stoicism was a lie.

"How old are you, Becker?" She asked absently, wrenching the cork from the wine bottle.

"Eighteen," he replied nervously, turning to see if anyone heard her, "Like you, _Christofer_."

For a second she appeared dumbfounded. She'd forgotten. She was eighteen too, and not a woman, but a man. And she wasn't sick anymore, but strong and worthy of respect. A man named Christofer, a good Nazi. A real hero, idol to the old mothers and the young children. Ration this, buy that. Have another drink.

_Eighteen._ It was young, wasn't it? To fight at fifteen, only to return years later unrecognisable and disfigured, if not externally then within. Janice remembered it suddenly. The history of her new identity, her disguise: it was Becker's life.

The deception grew as Becker wove elaborate tales of the two of them in battle: _Christopher_ and Becker on the lines of the Russian front, killing Allied soldiers by the thousands. Strong German boys nurtured by war, returning as infallible men. The Nazis loved it, living proof of their crusades. The golden boys, Gottlieb and Becker. Let the whole Reich know! The _ubermench_ lives! We have attained perfection.

And as if on impulse, her deviance was erased. Becker remoulded her public image and the change was incontestable. Her madness never existed, her skin was as ivory: flawless and ideal. She was handsome now to everyone. Still just a boy, still young and stupid, but _Christofer_ was a symbol of power, the image of victory and health. Becker too, with his dull brown hair, his big blue eyes and naturally red lips. Both pretty faces, masculine and feminine and balanced: easily attractive, commanding of respect.

"Heil Hitler!"

The General saluted walking out on the terrace and she and Becker stood to respond. They gestured with arms outstretched and nodded to the General. His men crowded behind him, quiet and pleased. He placed his hands on the sides of his paunch stomach, hooked his thumbs into his tight leather belt.

"My, my, Gottlieb, every time I turn around, you are in this café. I should think you never leave!"

The men chuckled and Janice offered a weak smile, raising her glass of wine to her lips.

"You too, eh, Becker?" The General continued, "Well I suppose you boys deserve it. But Germany will need her heroes again. The Fuhrer will be calling upon you both soon."

Becker's face was blank, "Of course, it would be an honour."

The General's expression soured a little, the mirth in his eyes dimmed, "Of course." He waved his hand in the air as if to wave away his suspicion, "You two must join us for drinks. Have you had dinner? Yes, of course you have. It's quite late. Then perhaps a bit later. Jager will send for you when we're finished."

Becker nodded, "That would be fine, General."

"Splendid," he replied, a tight smile on his face sagging the loose skin of his jowls and cheeks.

He nodded to them again and turned, his company following behind him, vanishing through the open door to the upper tier of the café, shouting and laughing as they passed the bargirls and soldiers in the halls.

Becker poured himself a glass of wine and they sat in silence for a while, listening to the muffled sounds of the radio on the main floor. Scantily dressed women stood in the doorway, eying them, walking back and forth to the terrace, peeking through, waiting and then disappearing again. The women regarded them with curiosity.

Janice too, felt the piquing interest of mystery, and her gaze travelled to one woman: white-blonde, thin and tall, standing at the side of the doorframe. Beautifully formed, the girl was very dainty, slight from the slender shape of her legs to the features on her face. Her eyes were dark. Passionate. Her expression was coy, darting from the floor to Janice, wondering about the boy in uniform. A prize.

"I think I would like to go to America after the war," Becker said and Janice whipped her head in his direction, startled by his voice.

She reached for another cigarette, lit it on the candle centerpiece, "Why?"

He was quiet for a moment, pensive, staring down at the ground. His head lifted as he exhaled a stream of smoke, "If American women are like you say… like Melinda… I think I would like to go there."

Her brows furrowed and she shook her head, "How can you have affection for them? For women? For anyone?"

He took a sip of wine, "It comes and goes. I suppose I would like a wife. Someone to take care of me. Someone to watch doing those busy little things that women do, you know, cooking, dressmaking, primping themselves. I knew a woman who made hats once… it was completely uninteresting to me, but I felt comforted observing her. To be surrounded with domesticity… " He chuckled, voice trailing off, "It is outside of your nature. You don't understand."

"Women help you to forget the war… " She said, exhaling a puff of smoke, "I know." She turned back to the blonde at the far side of the terrace.

His brows furrowed as he watched Janice, taking a few gulps of wine before he added, "Even if you wanted to… she thinks you're a man."

Her gaze darted back to him, eyes wide with panic. His face was cold. There was no contempt in it. He would leave her alone, let her be.

She nodded, continued to drink. She did not look back at the woman, feeling suddenly repulsed by her. An hour past and the wine was gone, the cigarettes reduced to ashes, burning embers eating through the crumpled foil of the empty cigarette pack. The night air was cool against her skin, felt odd against the thick warmth of alcohol in her veins. Janice glimpsed fleetingly at the doorway. The blonde woman was gone.

***

The world was awash in a dark haze, purple and black shadows punctuated by bronze streetlamps. She moved between them, stumbling and feeling displaced. She hummed the German national anthem, stuttering on words. Her hands were out in front of her, kept her from colliding with objects: a lamppost here, a wall there, an iron fence, a garden bed. Back and forth, swaying, she wobbled through the streets intoxicated. Too many drinks with the General and Becker and those other officers… what were their names? Forgotten.

She turned the corner and nearly collided with a man leaning on the brick wall of a house, smoking a cigarette. She pushed him away and kept walking. Becker's house was just a few feet away. Gradually, footsteps sounded behind her as the man followed.

- _Christofer!_ The voice hissed at her. Janice turned, slurred her response.

"Whaddya want?"

"To talk to you, Christofer," he replied.

"Who're you?" She asked, backing away from him.

The man chuckled, "Nemo." A sinister grin, "It doesn't matter."

Her face twisted in a mask of confusion as he approached her, tossing his cigarette to the ground and trampling it. He looked around suspiciously as he neared her, turning to check the shadows. Then his hands reached out, seizing her shoulders as he pulled her against him.

"You look like a nymph, boy," came the seedy voice, saturated with the scent of cigarettes and liquor. His hot breath was on her ear.

Janice struggled. She did not know the man. He positioned her in his arms so her back faced him, and pinning her down, he proceeded to touch himself, unfasten his trousers. She fought his grip, backed him into the wall and he smacked hard against it, grasp loosening while he groaned in pain. She turned to punch him and he put his hands around her neck. She gagged, raised her hands to the man's face, thumbs finding his dark eyes and pushing them inward, wiggling the eyeballs obscenely inside of his head.

She crushed them harder as she heard him groan, watched as blood oozed from beneath her thumbs. He wrenched himself away and fell to the ground, hands covering his eyes. He whimpered and she kicked him in the gut. He fell forward, head on the cobblestone street. She stood over him, raised her heavy boot and slammed it onto the side of his head, hammered her foot over and over into the softening meat. At last she stopped, heard the silence again.

There was blood beneath her boots, staining the soles and collecting in a scarlet mess on the ground.

_"_Christofer!" Another voice. She scowled. She was sick of voices.

Becker emerged from the corner, huffing and resting on his bent knees. He had an idiotic smile on his face, blissful and as drunk as she was. He approached her casually, grin fading as he saw the body and his eyes stayed fixed on the dead man, growing wider.

He stood over him, "What the fuck did you do?"

"Deserved it," she answered coldly.

"Fuck!" Becker ran his hands through his hair. "Why? You were supposed to go to the house!"

"Right there," she pointed at the home, "I was almost there."

He ran his hands through his hair again, face twisted in shock, "Pick him up. Help me carry him."

She grabbed the shoulders and the head lolled back in between her arms, bouncing with each step she took. Becker grabbed the feet and they walked inside Becker's house across the road. Leaving the front door open, they trailed the limp, heavy body through the living room and bedroom, placed him in the porcelain tub in the bathroom. They panted as they dropped it into the vessel, exhausted.

"Go into the bedroom. Take the sheets off the bed," Becker said without looking at her.

She stumbled into his bedroom, ripping the thin sheets from the mattress, carrying the bundled heap beneath her arm. She returned to the bathroom and deposited the ball of fabric on the floor. Becker had removed his dagger and was drinking from a bottle of vodka. He sipped from the long, clear bottleneck, sitting on the toilet lid, staring at the body's butchered face.

"Get out," he demanded.

"You said I could stay here… back at the café," she said, voice low.

"Not anymore. Get out."

She obeyed, staggered through the streets again, struggled to put the key in the lock at Jack's place. She lumbered through the kitchen to the larder and down to the cellar, used her other key on her bedroom door. It was empty. Of course. And the light was still on. The same dull room.

Janice collapsed onto the bed fully clothed, feeling dizzy. She closed her eyes to ease the nausea, and as the wave of discomfort passed, she quickly fell asleep.

***

She cursed as she woke, reeling from a hangover. It was an hour before she rose from bed, pressed the wrinkles in her uniform. She listened outside the door and finding it safe, exited the empty cellar and went into the house.

In the bathroom, she stared at her reflection in the mirror, eyes red-rimmed, complexion more yellow than gold. She peered out the door to the clock on the wall. It was late afternoon. There was little time. The light hurt her eyes and she brought her hand up to shield them, the smell of floral scent on her fingers. Melinda's perfume. Her brows furrowed. What happened last night? She couldn't remember.

Still wearing her boots, she removed them, noticed the dark encrusted stains on the soles. Blood. How long had it been there? Had she trailed blood through the house? What Melinda must have thought…

It mustn't have mattered. When she awoke, her room was empty, the house was empty and the café was bustling with customers. She could smell the aroma of food, taste the flavour of it in her mouth as it filled her nostrils, heard the sound of the people and Jack talking to someone from inside the kitchen. It was a day like any other, running smoothly, quietly. She started the shower.

***

When she emerged through the front doors of the café, dressed in full uniform, she sat down at a secluded table. Jack joined her with two glasses of wine. Melinda ran back and forth between the tables, avoided making eye contact. Janice sighed and sipped the wine, listening as Jack spoke.

"Good afternoon," he said, slight sarcasm in his tone, "Are you ready for tonight?"

She swallowed a mouthful of wine, felt her headache improve slightly, "More or less."

He nodded, "Good. Listen. Tonight, when you get off the train, there will be a jeep waiting for you. The driver's name is Oskar. He's going to take you to the mines. Remember that."

She sipped her wine gingerly.

"You've studied the landscape?"

"Yeah."

"The tunnels and rooms?"

"Yes."

"Then it's all up to you now."

Her brows furrowed, "What about Becker?"

"What about him?"

"He's not coming with me?"

His expression was bemused, "No. Did he say he was?"

She shook her head, "No. Forget it."

He sighed, "I'm sorry to have to do this to you. You've got to go alone. I'd go with you if it didn't endanger you."

"I know."

"Be ready tonight for the train."

He got up and disappeared behind the bar. _Be ready for the train_. What would she bring? Her uniform, her gun. That was all there was. She finished her glass of wine and left the café, re-entered the house through the front door and went down to the cellar. She would study the photographs again. There would be no room for mistakes.

***

Standing on the platform, the steam rose up from the tracks beneath the dark machinery of the train. Her rifle hanging loosely on its leather strap, she stared at the train car, thought of Smythe and Merkers, Nazis and her home in Princeton. She thought of Jack and how much respect she had for him, grateful for everything he did for her. She thought of the doctors and her sickbed, her medicine and her wounds, the ghosts of her past. She thought of Ben and the silence that they shared, the mourning. Hesitating, she thought of Melinda.

It was the end. She would return victorious or she would die. If she was successful, she would go home to America, with or without Melinda and Jack. She would find a plane somehow, have her quiet life. She would forget everything that transpired in Germany, in Wewelsburg, all the residual images of a bad dream. In Princeton, surrounded by the trappings of her home, she would abandon years of memory. She would have peace.

The train was ready to leave. Jack stood behind her with Helen beside him. He was irritated, disturbed by Melinda's absence. Helen seemed indifferent. She approached Janice, hugged her and kissed her on the cheek, wished her well. Jack stepped forward.

"Be careful, alright?" He said, leaning in to hug her and then nervously looking about. He held out his hand instead. Janice shook it firmly. "Come back safe," he added.

-_ All aboard!_

The conductor's voice carried across the platform. Janice inhaled deeply, turned from them both and headed toward the train. She stepped into the doorway of the train car and heard a shriek.

"Christofer!"

Her head whipped in the direction of the sound. Melinda bounded up the platform, stopped just short of crashing into her. The train began to move. Melinda's hand reached out and Janice took it, feeling a light, malleable object shoved into her palm. She did not pause to look at it, stared at Melinda. She had been crying. Mel's fingers clawed at Janice's hand, holding on until she was forced to let go.

Behind her, a man urged Janice to step away from the door and close it. She reluctantly agreed, stumbling back into the isles between the seats. She found a vacant space, the object clutched in her hand, creasing in her tight grip. Settling into a seat, she put her rifle in the empty spot beside her.

Janice waited a few minutes, looking around at the other soldiers, suspicious of being watched. When she was satisfied that she was alone, she uncovered her reddened palm, finding a small scrap of folded paper. Swallowing, she opened it with trembling fingers.

The note was tiny, scrawled with black ink in Melinda's hand:

_I love you._

Janice crushed the note in her fist. Tears threatened at the corners of her eyes and she hid her face in her hands.

So it was true.

Her blurred vision wandered absently to the seat across the aisle. There was a man with scarlet, cable-like flesh, burned and hollowed-out cheeks, teeth visible through the holes in his skin. His ear was missing. No uniform. A white cloth was draped over his lap. He turned. The French pilot, dead in the castle. The scorched ends of his mouth turned up in a wide, macabre grin. His bony fingers raised into the air by degrees and staring at her, eyes and nose missing, he waved: _Hello, there. Hello!_

***

It was still dark when she arrived in Merkers, got off of the platform and found a jeep parked nearby, the driver asleep over the steering wheel.

"Oskar?" She asked, loud enough to wake him.

He recovered from slumber gradually, rubbing his eyes. "Private Gottlieb?" He asked, a bemused expression on his face as his vision focused, "Thought you'd be taller. No matter. Hop in." The engine sputtered to life.

The drive to the mines was a sombre blur, the cold air of the dawn cutting through the thick fabric of her uniform. She shuddered, glancing out at the barren landscape as they approached a series of buildings. Two large smokestacks billowed dark clouds into the air. Industrial pipes stretched into and from the brick structures, connecting them; thick cables suspended from towers swooped down from pulleys to objects obscured by large rectangular buildings. The jeep wandered closer. The buildings were lined with darkened windows and marked by iron fences at the entrance.

The main building loomed over her. Rickety pulleys creaked, revolution after revolution, a clamorous echo of metal off in the distance. Stepping out of the jeep, Oskar headed toward the main building while Janice walked to the lift. The dirt path was littered with signs: _Achtung! Achtung! _And the mineshaft elevator screeched from wear.

She glanced at the control panel, the buttons glowing red and green, humming with the steady stream of electricity behind them. The pad looked familiar, of the same design as those in the tram at Wewelsburg. She shivered, pressing the green button and jerked as the lift filled with the sound of metal squealing, the machinery shaking from the strain.

The elevator was dark, iron bars suspended over the entrance hanging like fangs. She opened the door and the corroded hinges creaked; eroded metal slammed as the door closed. The lift travelled downward, the ground disappearing above her as she descended into the earth-scented darkness, tiny dim lights illuminating the tunnel every few feet. Devoured like hapless prey, she held onto her gun. Her pulse quickened as the ground came into view, the partly illuminated tunnels lined with cables and light bulbs.

She cautiously stepped forward, felt inside her pocket for her forged papers, adjusted her SS cap. Not unlike France, she thought, like the catacombs. The frigid air cut through her heavy jacket and all around her the atmosphere was cold. Her boots crunched on the ground but the tunnel was silent. She turned the corner, descending down a steep spiral staircase, hands braced on the wall to keep herself from falling.

She tripped on the beginnings of iron tracks, fell forward onto the edge of a metal cart. She cursed as she recovered, rubbing her side and adjusting her hat. Janice looked up. Her brows furrowed. Tiers of suitcases were stacked in mountainous piles, lining the large tunneled area on both sides. The iron tracks continued between the masses of suitcases, and behind the suitcases were bags tied with rope cluttered about the floor, so numerous that the ground was invisible beneath them. A black cable hung above her head; light bulbs at ten foot intervals stretched for yards.

"What the hell… " Her voice trailed off as her hand traced over the dust covered surface of one of the cases.

She examined it, a faded nametag tied at the handle. Her fingers travelled down to the latches, pressed on the buttons and the fasteners flipped upward. It was unlocked. She slowly lifted the lid and gasped, cursed as her eyes greedily scoured the contents.

Gold. Platinum. Jewellery. Silverware. She reached out and touched it, lightly ran her nail against the fine metals. Janice swallowed hard, looking around suspiciously. She retrieved a handful of gold pieces and stuffed them into her trouser pockets, hastily closing the suitcase and opening another. More treasure. She recognised it instantly. A sketchbook from the Northern Renaissance, the work of Albrecht Durer. Priceless German art from 1495.

Her pulse hammered in her chest, breasts swelled as she uncovered more silver. She closed the suitcase and headed further down the tracks. There were millions of dollars hidden in the cases, precious art, gold. _Smythe, the bastard_. He already knew. She obtained one of the sacks and reached in. Solid gold coins. On the wall, a large canvas of a portrait by Monet. Janice smiled, smothered the desire to laugh. Appalling. They had it all.

Her head snapped up as she heard the rumble of voices. She dropped the bag, left it unfastened in the pile and scurried down the length of the tracks. In her mind she pictured the maps, burned into her memory night after night in the cellar. Turn left. A red door with a light over the top of the frame. She went through it, looking back to see two Nazis appear from the staircase far in the distance.

Contact Smythe. She remembered the location of an office at ground level. Janice wandered down another tunnel, illuminated eerily by red lights. Another door at the side. She frowned. She did not recall any of it. The maps had been different. She panted, feeling the panic steep into her veins. Her hands trembled as she reached for the handle and pushed the next door open.

The room was barely lit, the shape of it obscured by darkness. A single table, stainless steel, sat in the center, hydrogen lights and cables on strange supports, papers strewn about the cluttered surface. An upturned chair behind it. She could see little else.

"Who's there?"

A rough voice, hoarse and tinny. She froze, wrapped her hands around the rifle, cocked it back. A man crept from the shadows, tiny specs and a large nose protruding from his bald head. He was tall and had large swollen lips. An odd-looking man.

He approached her, stared at her for a while, lost inside of his head.

"What is your name?"

"Private Christofer Gottlieb," Janice said, reaching in her pocket for her papers. She presented them to him and he hardly glanced at them, brushing past her toward the door, the echoing click of the metal lock filling her ears. His shoulders tensed. Something was wrong.

"Where are you from, Private Christofer Gottlieb?" He asked, the tinny voice making her wince.

"Born in Trier," she replied, "But I lived many years in Wewelsburg."

His podgy, calloused hands felt along the wall to a switch, and as he activated it, the sound of a generator revved behind her, the lights flashing on above her head revealed the expanse of the room. She scanned it. More iron tracks lead into a tunnel with openings on both ends of the large room. Behind the steel table was a giant contraption, hidden before by the darkness, now living with the swish of internal mechanisms: a loud buzzing sound.

"Isn't it beautiful?" He said, standing beside her, looking up at the machines. He squinted. She stared at him, then at the large device. "You've never seen it before, have you?" He asked. She shook her head. He nodded.

A siren blared through the hallway, vibrated through the door. An announcement blared through the loudspeaker, the horrified and enraged voice: _Intruder in the mines! Enemy soldier in the mines! _Her eyes were wide with fright as she listened.

"They know you're here," he said simply, his vision trained on the enormous object.

She lifted her gun and aimed it at him. He turned his head, glimpsed the gun barrel and casually glanced back at the end of the room.

"I'm not armed… but you would be doing me a favour." He pushed his specs up the bridge of his nose.

She grimaced. "Who are you?"

"Houtermans… Fritz Houtermans. I doubt you know my name. Few people do. I know you're not German. Please tell me: where do you come from?"

She scowled at him, "Why?"

He spoke without looking at her, "You see that?" He was staring at the machine, "That's what's called a nuclear reactor. I built it." He smiled, melancholy lines etched into his face, "A lifetime of work. It can generate immense power. Clean power. Provide energy for homes and businesses. Many useful things… for the German _volk_. For mankind."

He continued to mumble as she approached him, _uranium, element 94... _Janice pressed the gun barrel into his back. In a low voice, she murmured, "American".

"American," tears collected in his eyes, "My boy, I pity you. So young and full of hope too, no doubt, that American blood of yours: the American lust for freedom. I pity you. One day, the earth will burn and all that you love will be lost in seconds. And mothers and wives, yours someday, will give birth to little monstrosities. If you manage to live, you cannot eat, cannot drink or it will kill you. You will die by inches, liquefy from the inside out. I am ill with this consciousness. I have condemned the world of man for an eternity… I beg of you to kill me. You do not have to make it quick."

"What the _hell_ are you talking about?" Janice barked. Her jaw clenched as she poked him in the back with the gun.

"A bomb… a bomb as the world has never seen," he said, voice cracking with emotion, "Man has the hand of God… "

Janice slackened her grip on the rifle, the alarm screaming in the background. It was futile. The man was harmless. He glanced over his shoulder at her.

"Will you not shoot me?"

"How do I get out of here?" She asked.

"There," he said, pointing to the tunnels on each side of the room, "Go right. There is an old elevator shaft. It's broken. You'll have to climb it."

"Fine," she said and headed toward the opening.

"Christofer," the bald man called. She pivoted and turned back to him. He continued, "Take a message to your American friends… to the physicists, to your president." He scrambled to one of the tables, grabbed a first aid pouch and emptied it in a pile. He stuffed the papers on the desk into it: schematics, notebooks. Finally he jotted down a small note and closed the pack. "Tell them to hurry up."

Uncertainty twisted into her expression, she nodded and took the bag, swung it over her shoulder with her rifle and disappeared through the narrow tunnel.

Janice ran blind. There was no light and little air. Her hands were out in front of her, skimmed the sides of the tunnel ceiling to orient her path. At last, meager shards of light from a channel that stretched toward the surface, the cage of an elevator lift broken and rusted on the rocky ground.

She climbed it gingerly, tried not to cut herself on the eroded metal. Pulling on the suspended cables, she shimmied upward, made slow, feeble progress until she reached the top terrified and sweating. Janice hauled her body from the pit, rolled onto the cold, pebbled ground. She inhaled the scent of the dawn and fresh air with ecstasy. Alive. She got to her knees and examined the area.

A small cabin, with cables suspended from the roof stretched down the side of the wall to the ground. The office building. She headed toward it, stopped as she saw two officers patrolling the street behind it. She ducked behind the bumper of a nearby truck. The office had windows and the guards would see her. She had to risk it.

On bent knees, she hobbled toward the cabin door, waited behind the wall until the patrols turned to walk down the street. When they were far enough away, she snuck along the wall to the door, opened it and ducked inside.

The cabin was larger than she imagined it to be, a stove in the corner, a set of bunk beds, a row of lockers and two tables. On one, an abandoned plate of sausage and bread, and on the other, a radio. She ambled toward it and activated it.

"Rembrandt calling. Acadia, do you copy?"

Static and then the voice. Smythe. Her permanent contact now.

- _Acadia here. Did you find it?_

_"_Yes. All of it. Like you predicted."

_- Excellent. You'll be glad to know your reward is ready._

"Where do I go?"

A chuckle.

- _Very close by._

A man shouted from outside the door and she quickly shut the radio off. In a frenzied panic, she searched for a place to hide, opening one of the lockers. She squeezed her body into it and closed the door as the cabin door slammed open. A Nazi officer walked inside, rifle bouncing on his chest. He went to the table, obtained a morsel of cut sausage and ate it, turned toward the lockers.

He opened the locker next to hers, removing his jacket and hanging it. Janice tried to quiet her breathing, to calm her erratic heartbeat. She trembled and squeezed her eyes shut. She could not shoot herself in the narrow space.

In an instant, a gunshot sounded and blood sprayed through the small openings in the locker, covered her face in a splattered mess. The Nazi hit the locker with force and slumped down to the ground. Janice looked through the opening into the room. There, with a Luger in his hand, stood Smythe in SS uniform. He stared into the room suspiciously, wondering where she was.

She kicked open the door, rifle immediately level with his head. Her cold eyes narrowed on him.

"What the hell are you doing here?"

His shock evaporated and was replaced with a sinister grin. He walked to the cabin door, shut it from prying eyes.

"Now, now, Miss Covington, there is no need for violence."

"Shut up, Smythe," she hissed, "I'm sick of all this bullshit. Just hand it over."

He laughed blithely, "You know, you really _are_ entertaining. If only you could see yourself."

She frowned, "What are you talking about?"

He shook his head. "What did you find down there?"

"Art and gold. Tons of it. It was everything you said it would be."

His eyes narrowed, "That's it?"

She stared at him perplexed, "Yeah."

He pointed to the bag on her shoulders, "What's that?"

"The ravings of a lunatic."

"Your diary?"

"Goddammit, Smythe!" She shouted, gesturing at him with her rifle, "I've had enough of this."

"Give me that bag."

"Why?"

He reached into his pocket, retrieving a bound pack of papers and a small book. Yanking the book from the stack, he opened the front cover: a glossy photo of her new American passport.

"I'll trade you."

_The land will scorch with the heat of the sun… mothers will give birth to little monstrosities…_ She frowned. It couldn't be true. It was impossible. _To the physicists, to your president… Tell them to hurry up! _The man was insane, mad with power like the Nazi doctor. All of the scientists were drunk with prided intellects. A bomb did not last. It purged and dissipated, destroyed and then rested. There was no such weapon, no such magic.

She hesitantly shrugged the bag from her shoulders, held it out to him while her other hand steadied her rifle. He took the bag and placed the stack of papers in her palm. She stared at them, lowered her gun and searched through the pile: her American passport, birth certificate, American money, and a small map. On it were co-ordinates to a private airspace and a pilot's name. Tears pricked the corners of her eyes.

"Good girl," Smythe said, rifling through the bag, "Yes, yes." He chuckled, "Very, very good." He looked up at her, "Ah, right. There's a car waiting for you just outside the entrance. I suspect this bloody siren will be turned off eventually. _Someone will lie_, finding a dead American spy in the mines. You can walk to the car if you'd like. No one will stop you, but I'd hide those papers for now. Take the car to the co-ordinates on that map… "

"I'm going back to Wewelsburg," she said, interrupting him.

He eyed her dubiously, "Now why on earth would you do that?"

"I have some things I left behind."

He stared off at the wall, smiling, "Dear girl, there will be nothing for you in Wewelsburg by the time you reach it."

She froze. "What?"

"They're gone. Betrayed by one of their own. Didn't you know? How else would anyone have known you were here?"

She swallowed, feet carrying her past him. She heard his voice continuing, "They radioed your position quite a while ago…" And that was all she heard.

Janice ran to the parking lot at the mine entrance, blind with fury. She found the car, stripped the power wires beneath the steering wheel and twisted them together. Touching the ignition to the twisted chain, the engine revved. She yanked at the gearshift, peeled away from the parking lot shielding her eyes as the sun rose and lit the world around her in the bliss of summer warmth.

***

She drove off the road into the woods, certain the Nazis were waiting for her at the train station. Janice parked the car in the forest and hiked for a few miles. She reached the village wall exhausted. There was no posted sentry. She snuck inside. Winding through the streets, she made it to Jack and Melinda's. The lock on the front door had been glued shut. The café doors were sealed.

Janice walked to the side of the house where the eaves trough pipe stretched to the terrace. Swinging her rifle onto her back, she gingerly climbed it, entered the café on the second floor. It was empty, engulfed in a lifeless silence. She checked the bedrooms. Ransacked. The mattresses on the beds were slashed, lamps broken and pulled from the wall. Chairs upturned. Windows shattered. On the back of one of the doors was a list chiselled into the wood with lines struck through the names: Ben, Janice, Melinda, Jack. A swastika carved in black above it.

Janice covered her mouth in shock. She cursed under her breath. Checking the hallway, she ambled toward the staircase and peered over the railing. Her face twisted in a mask of horror and she stifled a scream, plastered her hand over her eyes.

In the center of the café floor, Jack lay dead in a crimson pool with a bullet wound in his forehead, his arms and legs stretched out. A Pentagram was drawn around him in his own blood, burnt out candles assembled around his body in a circle. Beside one of his hands, aggressively scrawled into the floor was the infamous mark: _Juden. _Janice didn't want to move, afraid of what she'd find.

Lethargic, agonizing minutes passed before she gathered enough courage to push forward. She aimed the rifle in front of her, slinking down the stairs apprehensively. Her eyes kept travelling back to him. A tear trickled down her cheek and a sob escaped her.

Janice scoured the café floor. Melinda was nowhere to be found. Janice headed into the kitchen, to the larder, coming to the steps of the wine cellar. The shelving on the wall had been moved and the door to the hidden room was wide open. Voices murmuring: a male and a female. She crouched low on the stairs and peered around the corner. The General.

He stood arguing with a woman in front of him. Janice knew the voice too well. She thought of Jack upstairs, of his desecrated corpse. Infuriated, she aimed the rifle, stared down the gun barrel at the General's head: bloated, warbling jowls and cheeks, the swollen stomach. _Piggy, piggy, piggy!_ Her hands wavered slightly as she pulled the trigger.

His eyes went wide as his stunned body began to drop, blood spurting from the hole where his ear had been. Janice rushed from the staircase and saw the woman bending over the General's body. She kicked her in the jaw. The woman went flying back, her ribs unprotected.

Janice stood over her, aimed at her stomach and shot into the woman's gut. She cried out from the pain and Janice leaned down to her face, seized a handful of her hair in a fist and demanded that she look at her.

_"_Where is she?" Janice growled.

Helen stared back defiantly, her lower lip trembling from the pain.

_"_Where?" Janice yanked the fistful of hair. When Helen continued to whine, Janice took her thumb and knifed it into the bullet wound. Helen cried out.

_"_She ran!"

Janice eased the pressure with her thumb. "Where?"

"I dunno," Helen groaned. "Out the front door."

"Who shot Jack?"

Helen was quiet again. Janice pushed her thumb further in.

"Me… I did!" It was out in one breath.

"Why?"

"They're going to destroy this place. _Niederhagen. _The castle… to be blown up. Witnesses killed. The General offered me freedom if I went with him. So I did. Sent Ben away. Shot Jack. Becker… " She coughed.

Janice shook her, "Becker what?"

"Supposed to shoot Melinda. She shot him."

"Dead?"

"I… don't remember." Helen's eyes rolled back, her breathing slowed.

"Why was there a pentagram upstairs?"

Helen shook her head, gurgling, going still, "The castle is a holy place… "

Janice shook her in anger. She grasped her rifle, shot at the limp bodies and filled them with bullets. She let the sobs escape, squeezed her eyes shut and put her hands on her head. It was all undone, unravelled completely.

She went up the steps and back into the house, hoping that Melinda was only hiding. She moved the bookcase, opened the trap door to the muddy foundation. Empty. Janice cursed and threw any objects within her grasp. _Melinda ran, ran out the front door_. She descended the steps and scoured the space beneath the floor boards. Uncovering the small container, she retrieved a handful of bank notes and Melinda's American passport.

Janice opened it and stared, passing her thumb over the phantom photo. Closing her eyes, she stuffed it into her breast pocket with her own I.D. and went back up to the larder, through the café, stepping over Jack's body without looking at it.

Past the door, the sun was warm and peaceful, birds chattered in the branches of trees; life was thriving. She stared into the distance. Empty space. The sound of her boots echoed hollow on the cobblestones. A forsaken village in the mountains; no one would ever hear of it. Janice marched through the streets in anguish and rage. Alone again. Abandoned.

***

Hours gone, slipped through the sieve of time like memories of her life before the war. The sun was hot. She threw her hat on the road, her hair stuck to her forehead. Janice followed them for miles: the marks, drawn in blood, like ciphers in the tombs of Egypt. First the letter J the cobblestones in the road, and an arrow pointing beneath it. Then an A on the wall of a house, an N, I, C, each dark and dried in crusted blood.

Away from Wewelsburg, the land stretched in fields and dirt roads. She felt dizzy, decided to rest beneath the shade of the barn in the distance. Janice hurried to it, the iron gate creaking as she pulled the door open to the field. She wandered toward the barn and collapsed beside a cellar window, indulged in the comfort of the shade. A large tree stood in the middle of the field, a child's swing swayed in the light breeze suspended from the thick branches. She recalled a story Melinda told her one night as she struggled to sleep. "My father's house," she said, "has this giant tree in the middle of the yard. He said it must have been there for hundreds of years… " Mel recounted the memory with enchantment at first: the tall tree that she and her mother read books beneath in summer, pretending to be annoyed by her father and little brother as they played baseball. "That stopped when I was a teenager… my mother got Tuberculosis," her voice sobered, "spread it to my little brother. He died first. From that moment she never left her room, and I wasn't allowed to visit her. After she died, the house was disinfected and their bodies removed. I was banned from the funeral too. My father couldn't stand the thought that I might be sick. But I got lucky, I guess.

Baseball was my brother's favourite sport. I buried his glove and bat at the base of the tree in the yard… "

Janice squinted in concentration. The bark around the center of the trunk was bizarrely disfigured, an irregular shape to the wood. Apprehensive at first, she rose from the shade to examine the hulking tree.

Within several yards she could see it: E, carved brutally into the wood with sharp lines. An arrow pointed downward. She started, saw a limp, dirty hand obscured by the thick tree trunk. Someone on the other side. She followed the hand, palm open and fingers curled like the legs of a dead spider on its back. Ugly. The arm was limp, the jacket stained with crimson at the side. Janice collapsed to her knees when she saw the face.

Becker.

He looked peaceful despite the violent mess of blood on his clothes, with his feminine lips and handsome jaw. His eyes were closed, the face pale-white. Her chest ached as she stared at him. Brother, ally and mirror; another part of her had been taken. His skin was clammy and decomposing, the cold nothingness of the dead. She knelt beside him and mourned. Time became incalculable.

When at last she pried her mind away from him, Janice wandered back to the other side of the tree. Following the arrow, she clawed at the soft dirt at the base of the trunk. Red objects surfaced in the dark soil: a pair of shoes. Janice bent to examine them. On one, the heel was broken, splintered at the top. On the inside of the shoes, the size was stamped and fading: ten. She turned the objects in her fingers, stared at the rubber sole. _Made in America. _It wasthe right size.

A rolled scrap of paper peeked from beneath the insole of the broken shoe. Gingerly, she retrieved it, unfolded the mangled scrap. It was Melinda's handwriting, tremulously scribed:

_Moonlight,_

_My dear, a little __Rätsel:_

_Swoon, belle, dearest, _

_This ache, near god. _

_The Baker lies here. _

_Heading to the thorn._

_It's too soon to say goodbye, _

_But I am afraid. _

Janice frowned, wiped her forehead. The sun bore into her back and the top of her head, made her lethargic, slowed her logic. She removed her passport, flipped to an empty page and sat down in the grass, decoding the message.

Moonlight,

My dear, a little _Riddle:_

_Soon we'll be arested_

_I can hear the dogs._

_Becker_ lies here.

Heading to the _north_.

It's too soon to say goodbye,

But I am afraid.

Janice cursed, read the message over and over. Her mind translated the ciphers, all Archaeologists' tricks. Perhaps the Nazis had not yet found her. Becker died before Mel wrote the letter. All of the signs meant she was alright. She stared down at the pit where the shoes had been.

Was it death, then? The symbol of the burial, and the colour of the shoes: ruby-red. _No place like home._ Mel had decided she would die on German soil. It was permission to surrender, a plea: Forget it all and run, it said, _run home, run home, run home_.

Her eyes darted up and down the dirt road, over the endless green field. A cool breeze rustled the leaves above her, brushed through the tall grass and the blades dipped and swayed in unison. It raised the hair on her neck, tinged the flesh of her cheeks. She collapsed back against the tree and closed her eyes, sealed away from the world.


End file.
